The Allies
by Lily of the Shadow
Summary: Jake and the other Animorphs must decide whether to trust a new kid, after the fiasco with David. But Dib has allies that could win the war-for the right price. Are they willing to pay it?
1. Chapter 1

Something that came to mind. Enjoy!

* * *

"You may note," the teacher announced, "that we have a new student in class. Mr. Membrane?"

Jake and I exchanged surprised looks—that named sounded so familiar... We looked to the back of the room with everyone else.

A dark-haired kid in the back stood up with a half-wave and a wry smile. "Dib," he provided. There were some whispers. "Yes, Crazy Dib," he said with a sort of amused eye-roll. He hadn't been in public school for several years, because when he left he was known for being insane, and people refused to work with him in class. I remembered making fun of him—he was one of the few people lower on the ladder than my own charming self. "Not crazy anymore, I promise," he added, holding up an open hand as if swearing in court.

There was some scattered, nervous laughter. Dib sat back down and opened his notebook, and the class properly began. Crazy Dib was back? I vividly remembered him raving about aliens for the first 5 years of our education. I looked at Jake, and could tell he remembered, too. It was decided without words; we'd approach him at lunch and see why he was back.

-._.-*-._.-

We got our trays and found a table near the middle. Jake kept an eye out for the new guy while I poked at my tray sullenly. Dib passed us, and Jake waved a little.

"Hey, Dib!" he called. Dib looked back, coming to a stop.

"Hey," he returned, somewhat warily.

"Jake," Jake said. "This is Marco. If you're not headed somewhere special, you want to sit with us?" he offered. Dib smiled a little more easily, relaxing slightly.

"Sure, thanks," he said, taking a seat across the table.

"So what were you up to while out of school?" I asked. "I remember you were in Mz. Bitters' class until 5th grade, then you sort of disappeared," I said, taking a tentative bite of limp broccoli. It was disgusting. Dib grinned as he stabbed at his own chicken patty somewhat gleefully.

"Oh, you know, travelling. Seeing the worlds, saving the universe. Normal stuff," he tossed out. I laughed.

"Oh yeah, you were really into the paranormal stuff. Aliens and whatnot," I said, as if just remembering.

"Obsessed is a better word," Dib rolled his eyes. "But yeah, that was me."

"So what changed?" Jake asked curiously.

"I did," Dib said with a shrug. "it's not like I've given in to the whole 'resistance is futile' garbage, but there's much better things I can be doing to save the planet than running all over, screaming at the top of my lungs about aliens. I've learned that sort of behavior can get you killed," he added with a dark sort of chuckle. There was a beat of awkward silence before he looked at us seriously.

"You guys feel trustworthy," he said. "I feel like you believe me, on some level," he paused. Jake and I exchanged a look. '_You have no idea,_' I thought.

"Well, you have to admit, it is a _little_ crazy," I said. "I mean, come on, aliens?"

"Are either of you in The Sharing?" Dib asked suddenly. It took all of our willpower not to react. I took another bite of broccoli.

"No," Jake said carefully. "Should we be?" he asked. Dib's eyes narrowed.

"Absolutely not," he said, with a conviction that left very little doubt in our minds that he knew exactly what went on there. Did we have more allies among humans? He sat back, looking around the cafeteria casually. "I'll literally have to flee for my life if I've misjudged you," he said quietly.

"Meet us outside, after school," Jake said, falling into his Leader of the Animorphs role. "If you know something about The Sharing, we shouldn't talk about it here," he said. Dibs eyes suddenly became guarded.

"Good," he said. "See you then!" he added brightly, taking his untouched tray to the tray return.

"Think he's safe?" Jake asked me quietly.

"I'm going to suggest the shack," I said. Jake nodded, and we returned to our conversation about Sega.

-._.-*-._.-

When I followed Jake and Marco out to the trailhead, I admit I was nervous. I didn't know how many allies they had, and while I was confidant I could trust them, they didn't know that they could trust me yet.

"Relax," Marco said jokingly. "We're not forest-axe-murderers," he said. "We just need to get off the beaten path, you know?" he said. Jake looked up at the sky. I followed his eyes and caught sight of a hawk. I looked past the bird, searching for any sign of a ripple in the air—like a heatwave; the telltale sign of a cloaked Bug Fighter. I saw nothing. We kept walking.

"I think we're good out here," Jake said suddenly. "What do you know about the Sharing?" he demanded.

"Oh, no. I don't think so," I said. "I said you seemed trustworthy, not that I trusted you outright. I came here as a token of faith, what do you know about the Sharing?" I countered.

"We asked first," Jake said. "And we have backup."

"We're at an impasse, then," I said. "Either we're both trustworthy, or neither of us are. I do have a proposal, however, to see who of us is which."

That got their attention.

"What, a duel?" Marco laughed, although I could tell there was a guarded edge in his voice.

"Seventy-two hours, locked up together. If you die, you were untrustworthy. If I die, I was untrustworthy. Simple. I can get someone to forge any sort of documentation you need for school," he said confidently.

"We can take care of that. We have just the spot," Jake said cautiously. Two hours later, we were at a small shack in the woods.

"This will do fine," I said, walking in. I sat down in the dirty floor and leaned against the wall. "Sixty-six hours left," I said, grinning. Marco and Jake exchanged looks, then sat down as well.


	2. Chapter 2

Wow. Didn't expect this to get ANY response. Thanks guys :)

* * *

It was almost three in the morning before any of us mentioned the problem that we hadn't addressed until now: We couldn't sleep, not without missing surveillance on each other. I looked at Marco, whose eyes were drooping already.

"You can take turns napping," Dib spoke up abruptly. "I don't need much sleep anymore. That way, one of you can watch me, and I can just watch you," he said. Marco looked at me, and I nodded. Without a word, he lay down on his side, and was almost immediately asleep.

"How do you not need sleep?" I asked Dib quietly, so as not to disturb Marco.

"Long story. Part of my years out of school," Dib said. We fell silent again until a few hours past dawn. I wasn't concerned, since Erik and another Chee were covering for Marco and I. We hadn't told Rachel and Cassie, because we didn't have time, but we planned for this from the beginning, so we were at least somewhat prepared. Nobody should have known where Dib was, though, so I was slightly concerned about his family. By noon, Marco and I were both resting, while Dib seemed to be only slightly tired.

"I know you're not Yeerks," he said suddenly. Marco and I were suddenly both very awake, and very on guard. It was the first time an alien name had been used among us.

"How?" I demanded.

"Bio-scan," Dib said, indicating the heavy digital watch on his wrist. "Lots of foreign DNA," he added with a confused look, "but none of it Yeerk."

"Foreign DNA?" Marco asked, startled. He looked at me. Could he deduce our powers...?

"Yeah. Animal DNA. I can't tell how it got there, or why it's there, but I can't exactly talk anyway, since I've still got Bologna DNA in my blood."

"...Bologna?" I asked, confusion overruling panic or sense.

"Another long story. Either way, I know you're not Yeerk."

"We don't know that you aren't," Marco pointed out.

"Which is why I agreed to come here. I was just letting you know, so it would explain why I trust you guys enough to get some sleep, myself," Dib said. With that, he lay down and closed his eyes.

An hour later, Rachel arrived carrying a bag of food for us.

"Erik explained what's happening," she said, her eyes falling on the still-sleeping teen across from us. "Is that really Dib? The crazy kid from way back?"

"Yeah," I said quietly. "He said he already knows we aren't Yeerks. Bio-scanned us or something," I frowned.

"I see," Rachel said. She quickly agreed to get Cassie and Tobias in on duty rotation, so we were set for time. Introducing Dib to Ax could wait.

* * *

Dib didn't say much more, acknowledging each of his new guards with a brief greeting. As soon as it hit seventy-two hours, he sat up straighter and adopted a serious look. All four of the normally-human Animorphs were present.

"I believe we can call our trust mutual, now?" Dib asked. Jake nodded, extending a hand to shake.

"I'm glad you understand the seriousness of this situation," he said. "Will you share your information with us, now?"

"First, since I came with you, you have to come with me. My house has been secured against any sort of bugging attempts. What I'm about to tell you _is_, in fact, secret. I trust you not to be Yeerks, nor in alliance with them, but there are other things that need to be kept out of the heads and hands of less than savory individuals."

He took us by bus to a house in the suburbs. It was a slightly run-down neighborhood, but one house looked particularly shabby. This is where he led us. He unlocked the door and swung it open, ushering us in.

It quickly became obvious that the outside was just a front. The inside, while old, was clean and well-kept. Blackout curtains covered the windows, so inside was brightly lit with flourecent lamps and overhead lights.

"Gaz! I'm home!" Dib called. A female voice from the kitchen barked a reply.

"It's about time, too!" she said, appearing. Shoulder-length purple-dyed hair swung to match flashing brown eyes. "Zim's stupid robot ate my pizza, and Zim won't come out of the basement to buy me a new one!" Dib sighed and pulled out his wallet, handing Gaz a ten-dollar bill. She huffed and grabbed a phone, pressing what we could only assume was a speed-dial for the pizza place. Satisfied that the girl was satiated, Dib went to a door and knocked twice.

Instead of opening, we were shocked to watch it drop out of sight, straight downward, to reveal a sterile grey chute. A flash of light and some smoke, and a being stepped out.

"Where _were_ you?" the newcomer bellowed. Marco, Rachel, Cassie and myself blinked. He looked like an alien—a real alien. Green skin, red eyes, antennae, the works.

"I was making sure our new allies could trust me," Dib said, stepping back so the alien could get a good look at us.

"Dib!" he scolded suddenly, covering his antennae with his hands and closing his eyes.

"Relax, you aren't the first alien they've seen," Dib said, stepping around him into the elevator. The green creature cracked an eye open suspiciously. Then the other eye. Then he straightened up. Jake suddenly recognized him.

"You're Zim!" he said. "The kid from school! You dropped out a few weeks before Dib, I remember now. Your... skin condition..." he trailed off, taking in the alien. Cassie stepped forward to shake his hand.

"Nice to properly meet you, Zim," she said politely. Zim shook it hesitantly. He remembered Cassie. She was nice to him once, back in elementary school, when people didn't associate with the 'weird kids'.

"Cassie, right?" he said. "I don't remember your names," he said to the others. Quick introductions were made before the doorbell rang.

"Down the chute," Dib said, hustling everyone into the elevator before Gaz got to the door to accept the pizza. She looked back to make sure the door was closed and everyone gone before she opened the front door.


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you, my lovelies! Here's some more :)

* * *

"Wow, this is incredible! Ax would be going crazy down here!" Marco said with no little awe.

"Ax?" Dib asked. I shot Marco a look.

"A sixth member of our team," I said cautiously. A nervous tension sprung up.

"Where is he?" Dib asked, suddenly wary. "He didn't take rotation with the others."

"He couldn't, not without giving away more of our secrets. Ax is actually Aximili Esgarrouth Isthill, he's-" I was cut off by a gasp from Zim.

"Alive?" he asked excitedly. "The Andalite prince! He's actually alive?"

"You know him?" I asked, shocked.

"My sensors picked up the Dome Ship in the ocean, and I managed to identify a single survivor, but by the time I got an undersea craft put together, he was gone. I assumed... Well, I assumed that the survivor had selected an inappropriate morph in attempt to escape and was burned or killed. I never expected.. the Andalite Prince!" Zim's voice was full of awe.

"He's alive," I confirmed, wondering what technology this alien had that he could identify such a target while the Yeerks spent so much time and effort searching, themselves. Zim, however, let out a short cheer, and Dib laughed.

"That's good to hear. Zim moped for days when he found the Dome empty," Dib explained.

"Did not," Zim grumbled, settling back down.

"So you've just been here, the whole time? In this... base?" Cassie asked, staring around in mild wonder.

"Of course! Once I started my growth spurt, I had to drop out of school," Zim said, turning back around and focusing on a monitor that had started to beep.

"Why?" Marco asked, frowning. "Puberty's embarrassing, but it's not like everyone else's voice doesn't crack," he laughed.

"I'm well past the age of your human _puberty_," Zim sneered. "And Irken growth spurts don't work like human ones anyway," he added absently. "They literally come in spurts. Most Irkens suppress them, but I don't have access to the medications. They tear you apart inside," he said.

Cassie and Rachel gave the alien somewhat sympathetic looks, Cassie more so than Rachel. Dib caught the look, and clarified: "He really means it, you know."

We looked at him, since Zim had immersed himself in quieting the beep.

"When I found him after his first growth spurt, he had gone from two feet and five inches to three feet and ten inches in a matter of eight hours. The skin on his torso and limbs was shredded, his slowly tearing muscles were barely holding his organs inside," Dib said.

That must have earned a particularly satisfying set of horrified looks, because Dib looked pleased with himself, and we could see a bare smirk on the Irken's face.

"I'm actually not done," he said. "I've got maybe one or two more, probably in a month," he said. He then looked at Dib. "Speaking of, you need a new antenna rotators."

"What does that have to do with...? Never mind, I'll see what I can do," Dib sighed. He turned back to us. "So. The Yeerks have no idea that Zim is here. His technology gives us a bit of an edge, but with only two of us—three if you count Zim's robot, four if you count my sister—it's difficult to do anything. We mostly keep track and steer clear. We were hoping to find allies by having me go back to school. I couldn't quite tell what it was about you, but if you're friends with the Andalite Prince, you must have some sort of special forces or equipment that we don't. We're willing to share all of our resources if-"

"_If_ we can identify your other agent," Zim interrupted abruptly. Dib looked at him.

"What?" he asked.

"The yeerks do not have the sort of bio-mechanical technology that the Andalites do. Is that Prince Aximili outside? Or are you also allied with the Andalite bandits?" Zim demanded.

"What? I asked, startled.

"The bird. It's been here since you got here." Zim moved away. He took another look at the console. "Bio scan doesn't indicate... TALLEST!" he cursed. He spun around to face Dib. "Did you know?"

"I guessed," Dib admitted.

"Then that would mean that Prince Aximili violated the law!" he looked shocked. Suddenly, I knew what they knew. I put an arm on Marco's shoulder and pulled him back from a computer.

"They know," I muttered. Marco nodded. "How?"

"What do you know?" Rachel demanded outright. Trust Rachel...

"You're the bandits! You're all morph capable!" Zim said, still shocked, but with some outrage peeking through. Dib grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

"Calm down, Zim. I knew from the moment I bio-scanned them," he said.

"But you said you didn't-"I began.

"Okay, I didn't _know_. But I suspected. And when your allies showed up with their particular animal DNA combinations... It wasn't hard to figure it out. Except for one thing," he said, looking at Zim.

"What?" Zim asked.

"The reports of Andalite bandits began appearing before the Dome Ship crashed. Whoever gave them morph capabilities, it wasn't Prince Aximili?"

There was a silence.

"Who gave you your power? Is the Escafil device still on this planet?" Zim demanded lowly.

"I don't see why we should tell you!" Rachel defied. "You've done nothing to earn our trust except for regurgitate stuff we already know! Is this supposed to be a partnership or what?"

"Rachel, calm down," Cassie said gently. Dib also took Zim's shoulder again, pulling him back for a quieter, private conversation. There was a long, tense silence. Finally, Zim looked at us.

"If Dib trusts you, then so do I. _But_, we have to meet your friend in the bird morph, and Prince Aximili."

"Deal," I said. "But you meet on our terms." Zim looked like he was about to protest, but Dib interrupted.

"Deal. When and where?" Zim opened his mouth to protest again, bit Dib waved him quiet.

"We'll call you with coordinates once we're gathered," I said.

"That'll be too dangerous, anyone could intercept a phone call. Zim will give you a tracking device that you can turn on when you're ready. It'll send a unique signal that can only be picked up by Irken equipment. We'll come in the Voot cruiser."

"Voot cruiser?" Marco asked incredulously.

"You think an alien wouldn't have a ship?" Zim snorted. "They're smaller than Bug Fighters, and faster, too. We'll meet you on your terms," he added sullenly.

"What about the girl upstairs?" Marco asked suddenly.

"Gaz? She'll be coming. She's an important part of our team, whether she likes it or not," Dib said. "Is tomorrow okay?"

I looked at the rest of the Animorphs. They all shrugged.

"Tomorrow's fine," I said.


	4. Chapter 4

Minor Note: Since the angle brackets do not work on ff-dot-net, **bold text** will indicate thought-speech. This is kind of a long chapter, and likely will leave you with quite a few questions, but the two after it should answer a lot of things :) Thanks for reading!

* * *

I hate mornings. Today was a Saturday morning, though, which meant cartoons until ten, then pizza for lunch. I love pizza.

"Gaz!"

My brother's voice crashed through my sleepy contentment. I scowled, pushing the snoring green-fur-covered robot off my lap. GIR yawned, rolled over, and fell back asleep. Lucky.

"What do you want, Dib?" I called out the door.

"The signal's gone up! We need to go meet those people from yesterday."

I sighed, closing the door to get dressed. Black tights, black skirt, purple shirt, black sweater. It had been my favorite outfit since I was four. I gazed longingly at the black glass skull necklace I had worn for most of my childhood, but I reached for the silver one that had taken its place.

I looked in the mirror, then stuck my finger in the skull's eye socket. My reflection flickered once, then settled into the image of a peppy blonde menace. Thanks, Tak. Really. Irkens have a seriously twisted sense of humor... I sighed.

I left the room and went to the attic, where Zim and Dib were waiting at the Voot cruiser. I scowled.

"Why are we taking _this_ Voot cruiser?" I asked. Zim's original cruiser was fine for two, or even three kids, but our grown forms were a very, _very_ tight fit.

"I don't want them seeing the new cruiser. I still don't think they're telling us everything, so we're not going to tell them everything," Zim said. Dib looked unhappy.

"How can we expect them to trust us, if we don't trust them?" he countered, even as he climbed into the cruiser.

"_Stink-human!_" Zim spat. I was slightly surprised by the old curse. "Even if it wasn't Prince Aximili who violated the Seerow's Law, they are allied with someone who _did_!"

"I don't see what's so bad about allowing humans to morph," Dib said. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head, many involving accidental cannibalism, but Zim growled.

"Seerow's Kindness isn't just about morphing," he hissed. Dib desperately wanted to ask more questions, but last time Zim took that tone, my favorite pizza shop was nearly half-destroyed by the end of their fight, so I stuffed my fist in my brother's mouth

"Shut up, Dib," I said. The twenty-minute flight to the origin of the signal was utterly silent.

* * *

We waited patiently in the clearing for the alien to arrive.

"We've been here for an hour already! What if this is a set-up?" Rachel asked.

Maybe not all that patiently.

"I trust Dib," Jake said, looking at me.

"I do, too," I said. My best friend was somewhat placated. I had the best people-sense out of all of us. Still, I was a little nervous. The last time we had brought someone in on our secret, well... There's an island that people think is haunted because of us. Because of me...

Abruptly, we felt a breeze, and heard a slight woosh. In the middle of the small clearing, we could see the grass bend and crush. Then, with no other preface, a pink and violet blob-shaped ship blinked into view. A triangular, face-like emblem stared back at us. The windshield lifted, and three people nearly fell out of the tiny cockpit, reminding me vaguely of spring-loaded snakes in a can.

"Dib," Jake greeted, stepping forward to shake the boy's hand. Zim stood back, surveying us. A blonde girl we didn't recognize brushed herself off and scowled.

"Wait, who's that?" Marco asked abruptly, stepping forward and pointing at her accusingly.

"That's Gaz, the girl you saw yesterday," Dib said quickly, moving between Marco and the girl. She lifted up a necklace that was shaped like a pink heart and squeezed it. Pink and yellow abruptly gave way to purple and black. All four of us jumped back, and we heard a rustle in the forest behind us. The pendant now appeared skull-shaped. She poked the eye socket and the pink-and-blonde girl was back.

"It's a hologram," Dim explained. We'd seen holograms before. Holograms like that were Pemalite technology, though!

"Why?" Marco asked.

"I wear it, all the time, just in case," Gaz said. She crossed her arms and we could tell we wouldn't get any more from her.

"What about you? Where's the rest of your team?" Zim demanded. Jake looked at Rachel, then at the woods.

"Come on out, Tobias."

A hawk fluttered down from the trees.

"**Sup.**"

The three across from us looked around, startled.

"You're..." Dib looked down at the bird. "You're in morph?" he asked curiously.

"**No,**" the bird answered simply. "**I'm a nothlit. Stuck as a bird. Forever.**" Not permanently—he could morph back to human for two hours at a time, but Rachel and Marco insisted on keeping that fact secret for just a little while longer. Dib looked sympathetic, and Gaz seemed... interested. Zim frowned, muttering something. Tobias jerked his head towards him, obviously having caught the mumbled curse. Zim looked slightly surprised, so I assumed Tobias said something in private thought-speech.

"So you-" Zim began, eyes wide. He stopped again, looking at the bird. Finally, he nodded, apparently satisfied.

"**He said something about working with humans stupid enough to get stuck. I told him how I got stuck.**" Tobias' thoughts came to just us. Jake nodded, even as Rachel frowned.

"So he what?" Dib asked, looking confused.

"Tobias has earned my respect as a fellow soldier," Zim said simply. Both Dib and Gaz looked at him in mild shock.

"Zim's..." Gaz looked at Tobias in minor awe. "What did you _do_? Zim doesn't just respect _anyone_."

"Another time," Zim dismissed the issue. "Is Prince Aximili here, as well?" he asked, scanning the sky for bird morphs of some kind. Dib didn't look ready to drop the issue of Zim's sudden change of heart toward the bird in front of them, but joined Zim in scanning the sky.

"Ax!" Jake called. The newcomer's eyes were drawn to the woods behind us as Ax emerged from the shadows, regarding Zim with mild distaste. Zim saluted. Dib and Gaz's mouths hung open.

"Prince Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill," he addressed. "Let rest enmity between our races as we fight for a common cause," he said formally. Dib looked at him, surprised. Ax hesitated.

"**I do not speak for the Andalite race as my brother once did. Prince Jake has my allegiance now.**" Zim faltered, apparently unsure of how to handle this new information. There was a brief silence.

"Anyway," Dib said abruptly, "We're all friends here, right?" He had noticed Ax's apparent dislike of the alien.

"**You did not mention that the alien was Irken,**" Ax said, apparently in private thought speech, since nobody else reacted. Unsure of how to respond, Jake shrugged with a confused look. "**Irkens are invaders, themselves. They do not infest like Yeerks, but they have evolved into destroyers of planets.**"

We couldn't respond, not without alerting the others to the new information. We exchanged looks. Invaders? Why was Dib—a human—allied with one? Why would one be against the Yeerks?

A sudden thought struck me. What if Dib was a Yeerk sympathizer? Not a controller, but allied with _them_ nonetheless? I got nauseous. We hadn't vetted Zim, or Gaz, as Yeerks, we had just taken Dib's word... and Gaz could go anywhere, with the holographic technology. We didn't know that the blonde was her only disguise.

I looked at Jake. It was apparent that he was thinking along the same lines.

"Of course," Jake said quickly, responding to Dib's question before the silence dragged on too long. "No secrets, then. But we don't have too many hours to be away before it gets suspicious," he quickly excused us. "We will contact you if we get any information, or you contact us, but we shouldn't be seen together too much, sudden contact is suspicious." He looked at Dib as he said this.

"Yeah," Dib said. "I planned on drifting between a lot of different groups, so no one group would be linked to me, just in case," he said. Everyone nodded. Everyone else exchanged goodbyes, while Ax and Zim stayed silent, regarding each other warily.

The three piled into the tiny craft and re-cloaked. We felt them take off, and waited a while before heading towards my barn. We had a lot to discuss.


	5. Chapter 5

You have no idea how much I missed writing fanfiction! My creative well has been bone-dry for the last 3 years, and now there's all these ideas and plots welling up in my brain! It's so amazing. Here's chapter five!

* * *

It was an awkward ride back to the base. I felt like the meeting could have gone a lot better. Between the Andalite's reaction to Zim, Zim's reaction to Tobias, and everyone reaction to Gaz, I felt like Jake and I were the only ones seeing eye-to-eye on the whole situation.

We landed and escaped the Voot cruiser as soon as possible. Gaz retreated to her room to catch the tail end of her morning cartoons, while Zim hid himself in a remote part of the lab, leaving me at a loss for what to do next. Part of me wanted to seek out Gaz and tell her it wasn't her fault. Part of me wanted to find out exactly what Zim knew about Andalites. Still another part of me wanted to run screaming into the ocean.

But _that_ part of me always wanted to run screaming into the ocean, so I ignored it. I heard a high-pitched squeal, and a metallic clank.

"HIIIIIII DIB!" the robot screeched, coming to a stop at my feet. Cyan eye-lights gazed up at me innocently.

"Hi, Gir. Where's your costume?" I asked. Gir was no longer allowed outside in his green dog costume, but he wore it around the house nevertheless. We had trained him (more or less) to sit still and pretend to be plush when seen through a window. The last thing we needed was to alert the Yeerks to our new location.

"I dunnooooo," he replied. "I think I ate it!"

I sighed. If he did, it'd be the third time in as many weeks.

"Go have Zim get it out," I said, nudging him towards the elevator with my foot. Gir saluted, though not in duty-mode, and rolled off, clanking against the floor the whole way. If Gir was downstairs, then Gaz would be alone. I decided to brave the Abyss and knock on her door.

"Gaz?" I asked through the door.

"What now?" she shot back, obviously exasperated. I hesitated. Maybe now wasn't a good time? Hell, with Gaz, it was never a good time. I took a breath.

"Can I come in a sec?" I asked. There was silence, then the door cracked open. A bright blue eye peered back at me with a guarded expression, before the door swung open and she let me in. She sat on her bed, staring at me expectantly. I grabbed her necklace and squeezed the heart, deactivating the hologram. It was still weird to talk to my sister when she looked like some sort of ditzy bimbo. I had to hand it to Tak, nobody would ever associate my sister with the blonde she turned into.

"What do you want?" Gaz growled.

"To talk," I said honestly. I sat down with back against the door, blocking the exit. Gaz grew quiet. In previous years, she would have insulted me and kicked me out. Now, she just pursed her lips and looked away.

"What about?" she asked after a moment. Her arms were crossed, sulking. The morning had bothered her. It was the first time someone outside Zim, myself, and some of Zim's Irken friends knew about her. As far as her classmates or friends at school knew, she was dead. The blonde they sometimes saw with us was a cousin from out-of-town who dropped by occasionally to go out for pizza with Zim and I.

I didn't really know how to respond. I wanted to tell her that it would be okay. That she wasn't this weird blonde stranger, that she was still Gaz.

But she wasn't. She hadn't been Gaz for a long time.

"Soon," I said finally. She looked up at me, confused for a half of a second. Then she got angry.

"You keep saying that, but I doubt it," she snorted, glaring at me. "Unless there's a massive counter-invasion, it's _never _going to happen. The Yeerks have already won."

"If you keep saying _that_, then yeah, they _have_," I said angrily, standing up. "But just think! Those _six people_ have been holding back the invasion, on their own, for _months _now! Imagine, with our help, and maybe Tak's... If Skoodge can come for a little while..." I trailed off. Zim had a lot of enemies-come-friends that we could ask for help from, if they were on the right side of the galaxy. Gaz didn't look encouraged. Having met Skoodge, I couldn't imagine why she wouldn't be encouraged by the miniscule Invader. He was like a cockroach: impossible to kill. And probably too small for a Yeerk to infest, come to think of it.

"So it's six humans, a defective robot, a bird, an Andalite, and three Irkens, against a hundred thousand Yeerk controllers? Have you _seen_ a Hork-Bajir? One of those _alone_ could take all of us out," she snapped. "Those blades can kill you without giving you time to blink and wonder where your head went." Her voice was shrill and tense as she finished her sentence, eyes flashing.

I fell silent. Gaz took a deep breath to calm herself down, and I had to remind myself that she'd been through more than Zim and I could ever imagine.

"They can morph," I said quietly. "You've heard the reports. The Grizzly alone has taken out several Hork-Bajir," I pointed out. Gaz's jaw clenched, and I could see the muscles in her jaw and neck working very hard not to scream at me. I stood up.

"Soon, Gaz. I _promise_," I said quietly, slipping out the door. As soon as I closed it, I hear a light thunk against the door, and something clattered to the floor. I waited a moment to make sure she was okay. I heard her box spring squeak, then a scream, muffled by her pillow. I sighed.

"That went well," I muttered, stuffing my hands into my pockets. I stood there for a while longer, trying to decide if I was going to risk my luck with the alien downstairs, or if I should just give up and pop an old Mysterious Mysteries DVD in.

I shuffled down the hallway to the living room, running my finger along the front of the DVD rack. I sighed and gave up, dropping onto the couch. I turned on the weather channel, put it on mute, and stared off into space.


	6. Chapter 6

This chapter is on the short end, again, but the next chapter is quite long. I do apologize for the wait—in addition to this fic, I've picked up the additional project of translating D'espairsRay's new album, Monsters, which is understandably time-consuming.

* * *

After some deliberation, we decided it would be better to gather in Ax's scoop than in Cassie's barn. For one, Ax wouldn't have to worry about balancing while we were asking him questions. First and foremost of those...

"Invaders?" Jake asked intently, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed.

"**The Irken race are scavengers. They used to be humble and weak, confined to their star system. Then, a long time ago, they were attacked. The ruler raised an army. Despite their tiny stature, the Irkens overcame their attacker, going so far as to overtake and destroy their planet. Irkens are naturally a hive creature, like bees, so the victory's euphoria was viral.**"

Cassie shivered. I didn't blame her. Hive animals and us didn't get along very well, but we understood what Ax meant.

"So they just kept invading planets?" I asked. "Just overtaking them with brute force and reducing them to rubble?" The thought was disgusting. At least the Yeerks were doing it for the bodies, mostly...

"**Some they made use of for resources. They began to acquire technology from the planets they conquered. By combining the technologies, they became one of the more advanced races in the galaxy.**"

"So why haven't we seen more of them? Shouldn't we be conquered by them already or something?" Marco asked.

"**I didn't think they had reached this far. They've overrun a quadrant on the other side of the galaxy, even further from Earth than my own home. For them to pass by the Andalites on their way here is... unusual.**" Ax looked at each of us with his eye-stalks. "**But it worries me that there is one that tall on Earth.**"

"That tall?" Marco asked. "He wasn't taller than me! I thought he was tiny."

"Bet that made you happy," I shot. Marco stuck his tongue out at me.

"**Irkens are about three feet tall on average. Height indicates status. Their rulers are the tallest ones of their race. That one had to be elite ranked.**" Ax's eyes frowned where he had no mouth to do so.

"Ooh, sucks for you, Marco. And you thought you had found a friend!" I said, trying to lighten the mood. Marco laughed. Nobody else did.

"Oh come on, that one was good," I muttered, crossing my arms.

"Rachel, this is serious. If we have an elite Invader on our planet, we might be fighting two threats instead of one, and it sounds like the Irkens aren't going to be afraid to come in, guns blazing, and obliterate us," Jake said, looking to Cassie to back him up. She appeared torn between her best friend and her boyfriend. Finally, she sighed.

"Dib feels... safe. They all seemed okay, to be honest," she said resignedly. "But I've misjudged people before," she added with a frown. "And there are so many things that don't add up. What if Dib is a Yeerk sympathizer? What if he's an Irken sympathizer? What if Gaz is some sort of spy? We don't know what any of their motives are."

"When we met Dib, he warned us against The Sharing," Jake said after a moment of silence. "Unless he was trying some stupid reverse-psychology thing, which I don't think he was, he's genuinely against the Yeerks. Right Marco?"

After a moment, Marco nodded. "He did seem genuine. It's why we met him after school, right? So Dib is for real. How do Irkens play into this?"

"Well," Cassie began. Everyone looked at her. "Remember what they were like in Elementary school?"

It was hard to think back. Nobody paid attention to anyone outside their friends in elementary school. But Dib and Zim... I did remember them fighting a lot. Dib was crazy, always yelling about aliens... and Zim was just... weird.

"They hated each other. Why would Dib help defeat the Yeerks so that an Irken could take over?" Cassie pointed out. "I have my doubts, and this is weird and kind of scary, but..."

We looked at one another. I heard a rustle up above us.

"Tobias?" I asked. He had been quiet, but now he shifted his wings and peered down at us. It was hard not to see those golden eyes as menacing, but hawk eyes don't show confusion, caution, or kindness like human eyes do.

"**His exact words were, 'stupid human filth, can't keep track of time, can't follow directions...' I said that I was trapped while on a raid, hiding under orders, to keep my fellow Animorphs safe. His whole attitude towards me changed. He might not have the same nobility of spirit as Andalites, but he has his own code of honor, I think,**" Tobias said. "**But he says he's trying to save humans, and then calls us 'stupid filth'?**"

"You're right. Something's not right with him, or Dib," I said.

"I get the feeling they've been hiding for a long time," Jake said. "Maybe they've just forgotten how to interact with people?"

I still wasn't ready to give them the benefit of the doubt. I looked to Cassie. She seemed torn. Jake seemed to have made up his mind. Marco looked as against it as I felt, but I knew that he and Jake agreed that at least Dib was sincere.

"**I am willing to accept Prince Jake's judgment, but I am reluctant to give them information until I know why the Irken is here,**" Ax said.

"**I can keep an eye on their house for a while,**" Tobias offered.

"Last time we were in there, they identified you. Demanded to know who the hawk was flying around above them. I'm glad they don't shoot first, ask later," I said quickly. "I don't want you scoping it out alone like that."

"What do we do, then?" Cassie asked.

"We wait. Let them make the next move, I guess," Jake said. "I trust Dib, but we seem to be divided on everything else. I want to give them the chance to prove themselves trustworthy, because they _could _be a huge asset."

The tone was conciliatory, but Jake had spoken. We were going to wait. I growled under my breath. I hated waiting.


	7. Chapter 7

As a general rule, my chapters are between 1000-1500 words. This one is just over 1800. It surprised me, I didn't expect this conversation to go on so long... Anyway, Enjoy!

* * *

Waiting is boring. Waiting keeps you alive, but really, waiting is boring. Rachel and the others were in school. I flew by the cafeteria and saw Dib was there, too. I had a successful hunt before seeing Ax that morning, so I felt I could play all afternoon. Against suggestion, I found myself flying towards Dib's base of operations. My sharp eyes could detect nothing unusual from the outside whatsoever. I swooped down and landed on the roof, directing my thought-speech towards the two people I figured might be inside.

"**It's Tobias. May I come in?**" After a few minutes, I heard the door creek open. I flapped to gain some altitude, then turned and dove into the house, blasting past a mop of blonde curls. I perched on the end of the couch and watched her close the door, then squeeze the locket that toggled her hologram. Her violet hair was incredibly messy, as if she had just rolled out of bed.

"What do you want?" she grumbled, crossing her arms as she scowled. Her brown eyes were still half-closed, and she seemed to be resisting the urge to rub the sleep from them.

"**Is Zim around?**" I asked cautiously. She eyed me for a moment before sighing and walking past me into the hall. She knocked twice on the closet door in the hallway. I was surprised when it swooped out of view, straight down into the floor. She stepped into the grey elevator and looked at me.

"Coming?" she asked. Her voice was low and grating. She sounded almost as if she had been... crying?

"**I don't do well underground,**" I said carefully. "**Being a bird now, and all...**"

She shrugged, pressed a button, and disappeared from sight. The door slid back up into position. I shifted from one talon to the other, looking around the small house. My ears caught the scurry of something upstairs, but it wasn't a mouse. It sounded almost metallic.

I was distracted from my confusion when the chute re-opened with a billow of smoke, and the girl stepped back out, followed by Zim.

"Tobias," Zim addressed. "What are you doing here? Do you have information for us?"

"**Nothing yet. I wanted to talk to you, though.**"

Zim's brows, or what I assume were his brows, since he had no facial hair whatsoever, knit in confusion. Gaz stood to the side, arms still folded, watching.

"Gaz," Zim said finally. Gaz raised her head a fraction. "Can you make sure Gir doesn't come downstairs? Last time he tried to hug a bird, it wasn't exactly pretty." Gaz winced and nodded, heading up the hall stairs. Once she disappeared, Zim beckoned me into the kitchen. I perched on the back of a chair, while Zim pulled something from the refrigerator. It appeared to be a juice pouch, but the odd face on the front made me think it was something utterly alien. Nevertheless, he stuck a straw in it and sucked about half down before settling in a chair across from me.

"Why did you come alone?" he asked.

"**Jake and the others are in school, and Ax wouldn't understand,**" I said. Zim's face hardened.

"Prince Aximili doesn't trust me, does he?" he said. Unable to lie, I bobbed my head in a bird-version of a nod. There was a silence. "What has the Andalite told you about the Irkens?" he asked. There was an edge in his voice that worried me, but I had no choice except to tell the truth. We were trying to build a trust with these people. It had to start with the truth.

"**That you're scavengers, and invaders. That you destroy planets for no reason.**"

Zim was quiet. After a while, he nodded. "We are. We haven't always been, but we are now. That's why I'm here, kind of." He laughed humorlessly, looking away. For a moment, there was a silence. He fiddled with the straw in his juice pouch.

"I'm not an invader," he said finally. "My pak is registered as _Food Service Drone_."

I was taken aback. If I had a mouth, it would be hanging open and stuttering over the next three words. "**Food service drone?**"

Zim nodded. "You're a warrior. You've made a sacrifice for your battle. You know what it's like to live wholly and completely for something. I lived wholly and completely for my race, and for my _Invader _status." Something flashed in his eyes, and for a moment, I saw Rachel in him. A little bit of crazy and a whole lot of strength. "I was an Invader. If you go simply by sheer scale of destruction, I was the _best _Invader in Operation Impending Doom One."

He fell silent again, but I didn't know how to respond. He was staring off into space, seemingly oblivious to my presence. After almost a minute, I had to snap him out of his reverie.

"**Then...?**" I began, unsure of what to ask exactly. Zim's eyes snapped to me, with a little more crazy than strength in them this time.

"I destroyed my own planet! Half of Irk was gone because of me. I was banished to Foodcourtia for a lifetime sentence of fast-food service. My Pak was re-programmed."

I had to admit, an entire race that uses McDonalds as punishment _did_ earn a point in my book, but the story worried me. Obviously, he was just powerful enough—or just crazy enough—to cause massive destruction. He didn't seem outwardly insane right now, though. There was that look, sure, but he'd held sane, civil conversations with all of us so far. Plus, his professional declaration the other day about putting aside differences...

"**Are the Irkens and the Andalites enemies?**" I asked abruptly, as much from my own curiosity as to distract him from the darkness I saw creeping into his eyes.

"No," he said firmly. "But we aren't friends. The Irkens don't dare pass through Andalite sectors. Despite our massive armada, Andalites are a... _superior_ force," he said, gritting out the word as if it physically pained him to admit it. "But the Andalites hate our invasion plans. There's an ancient treaty that allows us to mark a certain number of planets for conquest. Nobody is allowed to interfere with them, whether they're Planet-Jackers, Gallefreians, or Andalites. But generally, they're dumps anyway. We haven't conquered a planet as advanced as Earth in centuries." He made a fist. "I was so happy to be given this mission..." the darkness creeped back into his eyes.

"**Mission? I thought... you were banished?**" I said. I didn't want to encourage the darkness, but he was confusing at best. I shuffled my wings, almost startled into flight by his laugh.

"Oh, I quit when I found out about Operation Impending Doom Two."

"**You... quit being banished?**" I asked, incredulous. Maybe he was a little more crazy than I thought.

"Invaders blood marched through my veins!" Zim hissed, his fist suddenly clenching around the pouch in his hand. Greenish goop squirt from the straw, covering his hand and splattering across the table, but Zim didn't seem to notice. "They couldn't deny me a mission! I was the best Invader in the first Operation Impending Doom! So they sent me chasing after a sticky-note on the edge of their map. A secret mission, to a mysterious planet! I was so happy..."

His eyes glazed over. "I was finally getting the recognition I deserved! I was given my own SIR unit, and told that it was _advanced_... I can't believe..." He growled, his fist squeezing the last of the goop from the pouch with a slow ooze.

"**Zim?**" I asked cautiously. He snapped back out of it. I was really becoming concerned about this alien. He reminded me of an old man we once met with an insane Yeerk in his head.

"My apologies, Tobias," Zim said, standing up. "Dib has been trying to help me, but I think the only help will be a complete Pak reprogram. I'm still a little..."

"**Crazy?**"

"_NO!_... I mean... no." He threw the now-empty gel pack in the trash bin.

"Dysfunctional," Zim said finally as he turned on a faucet. Instead of water, a foam began pouring out, and he washed his hands with that. When he was done, he turned back and looked at me.

"I'm perfectly sane, of course!" he announced. "Most of the time. Dib can vouch for me."

Something told me he wasn't. I didn't want to push the issue.

"**What about Gaz?**" I asked, looking up at the ceiling, to where the girl was approximately above us. Zim grew very quiet, looking at his feet. It wasn't an awkward pause like his previous silences. There was a strange vibe from him, like some bizarre hybrid of shame and pride.

"I'm not really allowed to say anything. You'll have to ask her. Or Dib," he added.

"**Jake says you and Dib used to be enemies.**"

Zim laughed, a full, amused laugh, unlike his earlier chuckles. "Enemies!" he barked between laughs. "Oh ho ho ho... We wanted each other _dead_! I wanted him in ashes, he wanted me on an _autopsy_ table! I tried incinerating him, drugging him, turning him into bologna, drowning him with a massive water balloon from space, attacking him with a giant mutant hamster..." Zim seemed to be lost in good memories, because there was an absent grin on his face as he stared into space. After a moment, he snapped out of it. "But one day..." he stopped, frowning. "Actually," he said, trailing off for a minute. "Your leader needs to hear that story from her, not from you or me. It's the whole reason we're fighting the Yeerks."

"**What story?**" I asked, intensely curious.

"I've already said too much!" Zim proclaimed, turning his back to me. "But you can trust me. I won't do anything to harm this planet. It's not a target of any Irken invasion. I'm not an _Invader_." I couldn't help but note the bitterness in his voice as he said that. "Your people have nothing to fear from me. My purpose now is to fight the Yeerks."

I couldn't think of anything more to say to that.

"**We'll be in touch if anything comes up.**" I said. Zim nodded. I fluttered off the chair and through to the living room. Zim followed, opening the door. I flew out without another word. The late summer sun had warmed the ground nicely, so I had a decent thermal that took me far enough up I could glide most of the way back to Ax's scoop.


	8. Chapter 8

Very short chapter, followed quickly by another short chapter, but the next few will be quite long again :) Thanks for reading!

* * *

Zim was downstairs, in one of the dark, hidden parts of the lab. I hadn't been through the whole thing, his laboratory was massive. Sometimes, I wonder how his technology can even exist. The entire lab was essentially grown from a screw that he drove into the floor of the closet. I asked, but he told me it had something to do with dimensions that my puny stink-human brain couldn't comprehend. Of course, this was before he stopped calling me a "stink-human" on a regular basis. Maybe I should ask again?

I looked around, checking the security monitors for anything unusual. Someone was walking their dog. A squirrel scampered up the tree in our backyard. Bio-scans indicated nothing unusual.

I turned to my own work desk. Everything in the lab was either Zim's, or shared between us. This, however, Zim designated as mine. He didn't touch anything on it, except to offer advice (criticism) on my designs. Here, I merged his technology with my "normal human" sensibilities. Some of Zim's gadgets could be... unusual. Effective, of course, like his laser-lawn-gnomes. But those would look horribly out of place in this neighborhood. Instead, I compacted the technology into our porch lamp. It wasn't much more than a last resort, since we couldn't be frying people in our yard without drawing attention to our hideout.

I shuffled the parts around on my desk, searching for the small hand-held communicator Zim had given me. It was an Irken design that transmitted only in subspace. As a result, it was undetectable by most normal bugs. I opened the cover, searching through the screen for Zim's contact code. I finally found his name, after accidentally bypassing it several times.

Zim insisted that Gaz and I learn to use his Irken instruments in their original language, mostly to save him from having to reprogram everything. On one hand, it was a lot to absorb, very quickly. On the other hand, it was an excellent secret code, since its alphabet and grammar were completely different from anything on Earth.

"Zim?" I said as I pressed the call button. I waited for a response. After a moment, Zim's voice crackled to life over the speaker.

"What do you want?"

"I was wondering if you had it ready yet," I said, wandering back to the security consoles as I spoke. It was habit. Unless we were focusing on something in particular, we watched the security monitors. The computer could automatically detect anomalies, but we were all paranoid.

"No, _Dib_. I will _tell_ you when it's ready." I could tell he was trying very hard not to curse at me. I sighed, scratching my nose. The console's siren went off, sounding like a quick blast from a police siren, with red and blue lights to match. Startled, I scanned the monitors. Someone walking down the sidewalk was highlighted by a green target square on their head. I frowned, holding my breath. The person—the Controller—continued walking past the house. He didn't even look at us. As soon as he was out of range, the light went off, and the siren beeped, then fell silent.

It happened a couple times a week. A Controller would walk past our house, generally on normal "human" business, walking their dog, or just walking. It was scary, though. If just one of them looked at the house, and wondered who lived there, we would have a problem.

"Dib!"

"Yeah?" I spoke into the communicator absently, eyes still intent upon the monitors.

"What was that?"

"False alarm, just a walker," I said. The buzzer alerted the whole house. Gaz would be irritated if she had been napping, but she knew the necessity. The communicator fell silent. I turned to some of the other controls. One was fairly active, scrolling past a long conversation someone was having. In several known controller houses, we had bugs, more Irken subspace transmitters, simply dropped into holes in the wall, where cables or pipes went into the house. They transmitted a feed of audio, which was transcribed and translated by the computer and output in Irken on the console. I frowned. The computer was highlighting what it obviously thought were key terms, but I couldn't read that quickly.

"Zim? You had probably better come take a look at this," I said, scrolling back to where the conversation began. After a minute, a chute by the side of the main one billowed smoke and Zim stepped out, looking as though he hadn't slept in weeks. He came to the console and began skimming the text.

I watched his face change from exhaustion to disbelief. He reached the current time stamp, and watched the conversation continue to scroll by. Then, he said something that I had come to recognize as a very dire curse in his language. He turned back to the chute he came from.

"Go get Jake and the others, bring them here," he said before disappearing somewhere else in the lab. I frowned, looking at the console. I took the elevator to the main house. I thought about how to get the others to our house. I never used the telephone anymore. In fact, our house phone had never made calls to any number except one of the miscellaneous pizza delivery services my sister used. There were, of course, a _lot_ of pizza delivery services, since we didn't use any more than once a month, but those were the only calls it ever made. We didn't communicate with humans much since we got back.

I thought for a moment about sending Minimoose, but that was too far for him to go. Instead, I sighed and picked up the receiver. Jake had given me his number in school the day before, just in case. I dialed the number. Someone picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hi, uhm, is Jake around?" I said carefully.

"Hang on," the guy said. I could hear him set the receiver down and call out, '_hey, dork, phone for you._' A moment later, Jake picked up.

"Hello?"

"Jake? It's Dib."

"Hey. What's up?" Jake asked casually.

"I got some more research done for that project, want to come over and help me put it together?" I asked. Thankfully, Jake picked up on the real message.

"Yeah, of course. I'll be there in a little while," he said. I nodded, even though he couldn't see me.

"Alright. Later," I said. I hung up and went back downstairs to watch the monitors.


	9. Chapter 9

I do apologize for the wait. I had a minor crisis of plot when I looked back on old stories and remembered how many I never finished. Never fear, though! I then remembered that I have this one allll planned out, on paper even. I move into my apartment for the school year on September first, and for a week, I won't be able to do anything but prepare for classes, unpack, attend my job orientation, take placement tests, and so on. However, Wednesday, September 8th is my first day of classes, and from then on, I shall be fine :) Enjoy!

* * *

Before too long, there was a beep from the console. I looked. On the vertical camera that scanned the sky, there was a green target square on a bird high above us; an Osprey. There were alternate DNA sequences identified. One of the Animorphs, I deduced. It circled lower. I heard faintly in my head, "**Dib? It's Cassie. Jake called me,**" she said. I dashed upstairs and opened the attic window. It faced open field, and the inside was dark, so I didn't worry too much about anyone else seeing the tarp-covered Voot cruiser or anything, but as soon as the bird dove through the window, flared her wings and landed, I closed and latched it.

"**Tobias is right behind me by a few minutes,**" she said as I did so.

"I'll open it again when he gets here," I said. "I don't want it open for too long."

I looked at her. She regarded shuffled her talons, looking around the room.

"I know you have the morphing technology," I said after a moment.

"**It's still weird,**" she said. "**Plus our morphing suits are a little... embarassing,**" she said.

"Like some sort of matching costume?" I asked with a chuckle.

"**More like bike shorts and a leotard**," she said. "**It's not usually a problem, since it's just us, but if we're going to be holding some sort of meeting...**"

"I'll go see if Gaz has anything she can lend you. Is everyone coming?" I asked.

"**Ax isn't.**"

I frowned, but nodded. I then went downstairs to Gaz's room in search of something for Cassie to wear.

After about twenty minutes of opening windows and finding clothes for our guests, I led four humans and a bird to the lab. Zim greeted us on the main floor of the lab.

"Where is Pri—er, Aximili?" he asked, frowning.

"Ax couldn't come," Jake said. Zim's eyes narrowed.

"Of course," he said, with a hint of acidity. I almost winced. Zim turned back to the console.

"Why are we here?" Marco demanded. "I was in the middle of some very important bonding time with my Sega," he said.

"This," Zim said shortly, turning back to us and holding out the paper that he had translated the conversation on. Several words stood out at me through Zim's chicken-scratch.

Building. Pool. Kandrona. Army. Basic Training.

"No," Cassie gasped quietly. Zim nodded.

"If they succeed, your entire American Army will be Yeerk Controllers," Zim said quietly.

We stared at each other.

"They can't take everyone," I pointed out. "Special forces will need to be away from the bases for more than 3 days at a time," I said. "And deployed personnel might not have access to Kandrona..."

"But most of the high-up generals will be on base, all the time. Intelligence personnel, strategists... a lot of very valuable people will be Yeerks," Jake said. I hadn't thought of that. The realization hit me like a punch in the gut. Anyone who would deploy an attack against the Yeerks, most of the people who would call the shots if there was an open invasion, would be Controllers.

We stood in silence, absorbing the information.

"Do the Chee know about this?" Jake asked, more addressing his own team than us. Marco shrugged.

"Erek would have told us, right?" Rachel said, looking to Cassie, then to Tobias. Finally, her eyes settled on Jake. "H wouldn't keep something this big from us, would he?"

"If he felt we would get ourselves killed trying to prevent it..." Jake said.

"But its our _job_ to fix stuff like this!" Rachel said.

"It's not our _job_," Marco interjected. "Just because we do it, dosen't mean it's our duty."

"**We were given these powers for a reason,**" Tobias said. "**Elfangor wouldn't have done it if he didn't trust us to do the right thing.**"

"And the right thing is to get ourselves killed? This isn't just Yeerks now, this is the world's greatest military force! We're going against the entire American army now!" Marco threw up his hands. "We can't just waltz in and expect all of us to make it out alive. We're only four kids, a bird, and an alien!"

"Six kids, a bird, and two aliens," I cut in. The five morph-capable teens looked at me. "We're in this, too," I said. "We might not be able to morph, but we can provide backup, surveillance, intelligence, or something," I said.

The five looked at each other. I could still see a very "us-versus-them" look in Rachel's eyes, but I tried to ignore it. It was bad enough that Aximili didn't trust Zim, we didn't need any more dividing lines.

Finally, Jake spoke.

"Dib," he began, pausing to collect his words. "I trust you. But..."

"Nobody else does," I said with a sigh. "I guess we've been kind of... secretive," I said. Rachel nodded shortly, frowning. "Secrets have kept us alive so far," I pleaded with them to understand.

"And they haven't kept us alive?" Cassie said gently. "The last time we tried to let someone in on our secret, they tried to betray us, horribly. We don't need more mistakes. I can't count how many times mistakes have almost killed us," she said. I hated to see girls cry, and I could almost sense the tears welling up behind her eyes, even though there were no outward signs.

"So we stop keeping secrets," Gaz said, speaking for the first time. Everyone looked at her. "Well, if it will get this over with, let's just _do_ it," she said, crossing her arms and looking away. "We can play 'show-and-tell' until everything's out in the open. Zim will tell all about his robot and base and mission, and we'll talk about humans and yeerks and hork-bajir and Andalites and Irkens and everyone will know everyone's secrets, so we can put all of this _stupidness_ aside and just win the game. Stop arguing, draw straws, and just _talk_."

Zim and I were more surprised than the newcomers could possibly have been. Gaz never _talked_. She immersed herself in games and TV, trying to ignore the reality around us. She fought with us, sure, but it had been a single battle, born of outrage and fear. Then she hid.

Zim and I looked at each other, then at the Animorphs. For a moment, there was silence.

Then, Jake spoke.

"Okay."


	10. Chapter 10

Anohter long chapter. My sincere apologies for the delay, I've just started my senior year of college, and things are completely up in the air as far as what I'm doing still, lol. I hope this makes up. Finally, we know some more about Zim, Dib, and what brought them together!

* * *

"You go first," Rachel said, jerking her head towards Zim. Zim opened his mouth to protest, but Jake interrupted.

"Gaz suggested we draw straws, so I second that motion," he said. I breathed a sigh of relief. Someone was paying attention. He looked at me. I gave him a small nod of thanks as Dib ran upstairs to grab a handful of drinking straws. When he returned, Zim took a laser and chopped them to various lengths. Jake held the pile out to me.

"It's only fair," he said. I nodded mutely, taking the straws and arranging my hands so nobody could see the length. I held them up. There was a pause before Zim reached forward and snatched one quickly. Rachel picked two, then looked to Tobias. After a moment, she gave him the shorter one with a slight frown. Jake and Cassie took theirs, and finally Marco. I opened my hand. Not the shortest, I noted, but short enough. Dib stared at his.

"Looks like it's me," he said. "Where should I start?" he asked, looking to the ceiling.

"The beginning is always a good place," Rachel said, somewhat bitterly. Dib nodded.

"I've been into aliens and ghosts from the time I was little. I really don't know why. I think it was because of my mom, always encouraging me to ask questions. Dad was never like that... She died when I was little, Gaz was just a baby," he said. I looked away. I didn't remember Mom. I had a picture, of her holding Dib and me, but I couldn't remember anything about her. Dib went on.

"Then, one day, while searching for signs of interspace chatter between Jupiter's moons and Pluto, I came across a strange signal. I was picking up the waves from microphones from Conventia, though I didn't know that. I heard Zim, and his leaders, at a huge convention. The Great Assigning, it was called. Irken Invaders were being sent to distant planets to take then over as part of Operation Impending Doom II. I felt in my gut that the unnamed planet they sent Zim to, was Earth. Before I knew what was happening, this strange green kid called Zim appeared in my own class. Finally, I had proof! Irrefutable proof that aliens existed. Despite that, nobody would listen. I tried so many times to get people to see, to understand..."

I saw Jake, Marco, Rachel and Cassie exchange looks. They had all known of Dib and Zim as elementary schoolers. They remembered "Crazy Dib."

"One day, Zim didn't show up to school. I figured he was plotting, so I ditched at lunch." Dib looked to Zim, who had adopted a serious look. Zim nodded slightly. This part was as much his as it was Dib's, but it was Dib's turn. "I went to Zim's house," he said.

I remembered that day with a slight shudder. He had called me, begging my help.

"The lawn gnomes didn't attack me as I walked up to the door. I figured out long ago that he didn't have a bio-scan attached to them, so it only attacked people acting suspiciously. I knocked. Usually, Gir, Zim's robot... servant, I guess, opened the door for me," he said with a slight chuckle. Zim scowled, muttering. Dib's serious look returned.

"When Gir didn't open the door, I wondered if they were out somewhere. I opened the door. Nothing seemed to be active. The TV was off. Lights were off. I went into the kitchen. Gir was curled up on the table, hugging a pile of waffles, sniffling. I asked him what was wrong. I admit I liked Zim's robot, he's cute, and he helped me out more than once. He said something about his master dying. I was... happy. Excited. I had caught him at a time of weakness, I could capture him and take him in!"

Zim was now looking at the floor. Jake seemed startled. Even in his re-telling, you could tell how thrilled Dib was over the apparent doom of what they saw to be his best friend. "You have to understand," he said, catching their looks, "We hated each other. Loathed each other. I wanted his autopsy video named after me! And he wanted me... Well, just dead. Enslaved, or something. We had been at war for so long, we weren't even fighting each other, we were fighting this caricature of our enemy..." He stopped for a moment, looking again to Zim, who shrugged. He looked at me, but I didn't meet his eyes. He sighed.

"I went down into his base. I found him... Laying... on the floor," he said softly. Rachel and Cassie, without seeming to realize, leaned in a little. "I didn't realize at first that he was naked," Dib said, slightly embarrassed. "Most of his body was blue and glistening. His skin seemed rough, I thought for a moment. But as I looked closer, I realized I was looking at his muscle. The green skin had torn into rags. As I got closer, I saw something pulse near his abdomen. It was the organ they use for a heart, barely held in by an artery that parted one of the chambers from the rest."

Their eyes widened in horror and disgust. Dib continued anyway, ignoring the slightly nauseous look on Marco's face.

"Every bone had grown. His shins and thighs were similarly ripped.. his stomach was in tatters, his ribcage had opened up more rips and tears as it grew broader. His neck and jaws were torn. There was a rip down either side of his face, and his skin was tight and dry over the back of his skull," Dib said. I didn't have to listen. The image was burned into my brain, too.

"I didn't know what to do. I thought he _was_ dead, except for that pulsing organ, and I saw him breathing, very shallowly... I stepped forward, and that's when I noticed he was different. He was curled up, but he was definitely about a foot and a half taller than he had been. His eyes were open, but unfocused..."

"Get on with it," Zim growled lowly, startling all of us. "Yes, yes, my organs and what have you," he grumbled. There was a burst of nervous laughter from everyone. I had so smile briefly. Zim didn't like dwelling on his weaknesses, and that was one of his biggest.

"I went back upstairs," Dib said, shaking the reverent horror out of his voice. "I asked Gir what happened, who attacked Zim. He said Zim didn't have his medicine, so he was gonna grow and grow and grow until he died. The poor little robot was so upset, I felt horrible. And then, I guess it just sort of... hit me." Dim glanced at Zim. "At school, nobody talked to me. At home, Gaz was always wrapped up in her games, and Dad almost never came home from the lab. Zim was all I had."

He shrugged, looking up at the ceiling again. "I felt like I had no choice. I called Gaz, and told her to come help me. I had to promise her an entire month of pizzas."

"You still owe me three days," I put in humorlessly. Dib punched me in the arm, but grinned nonetheless. He looked back at the still-vaguely-horrified Animorphs.

"Gaz, Gir and I got him onto a stretcher. I wrapped him up in damp cloths, and tied them fairly tightly. I was afraid more organs would fall out or something. It was only three days before he could move. The pain was too much, and even after the skin started re-knitting, it hurt because it wasn't as elastic as normal skin yet. But Irkens heal quickly, I guess, because two weeks later, he was able to move, even if he was still a little sore. And I had been right, he was about a foot and a half taller. At the time, he was maybe 4 inches taller than I was. He couldn't go back to school, not like he was."

"Thank the Tallest," Zim put in. "Filthy pig-hole." Everyone had to chuckle, dispelling the horrified quiet that lingered after Dib's tale. I could almost see the distrust in Rachel and Marco's eyes give way to sympathy and, dare I name it, respect.

"We helped him get better, Gaz and I... I watched to make sure he didn't pull a fast one, and Gaz... well, I had to bribe her at first, but I think Zim grew on her. Even when he was on the edge of death, recovering from having his entire body shredded, he had the presence of mind to hurl insults and threats with the best of them," he snorted. I had to grin briefly.

"As soon as Zim was healed enough to make good on his threats, we left," Dib said. He paused. "I... think that's where I should stop, for now," he added. There was a silence. He looked at me. I looked at my straw. Was I really the next shortest? I looked around at everyone else's straw. My eyes fell on Tobias' claws. His was just a little shorter than mine. I breathed a sigh of relief. Just a little longer...

"Tobias is next," I said quietly. The bird bobbed his head.

"**Right, so...**"


	11. Chapter 11

I apologize for the wait. For those of you who have forgotten, we last left our heroes in Zim's lab, drawing straws to see who told their stories first. Dib got as far as he could, and everyone's turned to the holder of the next shortest straw...

* * *

"**My aunt and uncle raised me after my parents died. They lived on opposite coasts. I was shuttled between them every couple of months,**" I said. Sympathy from the two humans, but a stone face from Zim. I didn't expect him to react, though. He didn't seem like the emotional type. "**I was living here when I met Jake. He kept some guys from picking on me,**" I admitted. "**I sort of stuck with him. Marco was Jake's best friend, so I kind of knew him, but we never hung out. I had never met Rachel and Cassie,**" I said.

"**We were all at the mall one day, and I ran into Jake and Marco at the arcade. On our way out, we bumped into Rachel and Cassie. Rachel is Jake's cousin, by the way,**" I explained. The memory was almost hilarious. "**Jake made the mistake of suggesting that Rachel and Cassie needed protection walking home. Rachel was about to rip him a new one when Cassie butted in and accepted on their behalf...**"

I saw Dib steal a glance at Rachel, sizing her up. I wasn't sure how he judged her, but he nodded almost imperceptibly and returned his attention to me. I shifted, adjusting my talons and fluffing my feathers a little.

"**I was staring at the sky. I used to do that a lot, actually. But I saw something that night. A light, scooting across the sky. Before we could really process what was happening, an Andalite ship landed in the construction zone, right in front of us.**" I looked at Jake.

"**How much should I tell them about my father?**" I asked him in private thought-speech.

"We agreed on complete honesty," Jake said aloud. I bobbed my head. I would have taken a deep breath, if hawk lungs were designed for such actions.

"**The only occupant of the ship was Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul,**" I said. I saw astonished looks from Zim and Dib, and mild interest from Gaz. She seemed uncomfortable and distracted, though.

"**He was dying.**"

I had to pause for a moment. That night had hit me hard at the time, but it had gained special significance since I had discovered that Elfangor was my father. I almost didn't want to reveal that, but, as Jake reminded me, we couldn't trust one another with secrets hovering between all of us.

"**We wanted to help. We wanted to, so badly. So he gave us the chance to do so. He told us what he could about the Yeerks, as pained as he was. He sent Jake into his ship to retrieve the Escafil device.**"

"So it was Price Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul?" Zim asked quietly. Jake nodded.

"He didn't even seem to indicate at the time that there was anything wrong with it. We didn't find out until much later that there was a law against sharing technology with outsiders," he said. I rustled my wings. I almost hoped Jake would continue with the rest of that night. My father's dying screams still echoed in my head.

"Sorry, Tobias. It's your turn," he conceded. I would have frowned if I could. I saw Rachel offer me a comforting smile, and I wished in that moment nothing more than to hold her hand.

Instead, I continued.

"**He told us to run. As soon as we had the morphing power, he told us to run. The Blade Ship was landing, right behind him. The others took off. I felt like I was glued to the floor, I couldn't move. So he put his hand to my head, and blasted my mind with images, information. It was such a powerful sensation that I almost fell backwards, but it shook me out of my trance. I ran and hid with the others.**

"**Even as he lay dying, Prince Elfangor kept trying to give us information. About the Yeerks, the Taxxons, about the Hork-Bajir... About Visser Three... The Blade Ship landed. Visser Three came out, morphed something horrible, and...**"

I didn't need to say it. The three had horrified looks on their faces. Zim whispered something in his own language. Dib nodded in agreement. "**We barely escaped. A Hork-Bajir heard us, and we had to run for our lives.**

"**The next day, I tried out the morphing. It was creepy as hell, but I morphed my cat, Dude. I went over to Jake's house, and convinced him. We got Rachel and Marco and all went to Cassie's. We decided to fight. While we were there, a cop came up, asking about some kids in the construction site the night before. It was obvious to us then. He was a controller, looking for the kids who were in the construction site the night before. To kill them. We denied knowing anything about it, but then he asked us if we were interested in The Sharing. We didn't realize at the time that there was anything to it, but we knew he was a Controller for sure.**

"**When Jake got home, his brother Tom was asking the same sorts of questions, and then invited us to a meeting of The Sharing,**" I said, looking to Jake. He was watching me, not harshly, but carefully nonetheless. Dib looked at Jake, a look of intense sympathy coming over him.

"**We made the connection, and crashed the next Sharing meeting Jake's brother invited us to. We learned the truth there.**

"**We decided to fight the Yeerks. Our first mission was to go down into the Yeerk Pool to try and free Tom,**" I said. "**It was an insane mission, we didn't know what we were getting into, and we all nearly died. The others got out alright, in the end. I couldn't move, not without giving us away, or getting killed.**"

Comprehension dawned on Dib and Gaz's faces. Zim managed to look unimpressed, but he already knew my story. "**I was trapped in morph. For a long time, I was stuck as a hawk. I got used to the idea after a while, but I could only fly reconnaissance for missions... I felt useless,**" I admitted. "**Then, a being called the Ellimist got-**"

"An Ellimist?" Zim snorted. "Children's Fairy Tales! You can't expect me to believe that the Ellimist exist, can you?"

"Ellimist?" Dib asked, brows furrowed.

"Psycho-creeper-being," Marco said. "Gets his kicks by twisting our lives around like pawns in his little Chess game with the Crayak."

Zim looked a little unsettled. "It can't be possible. The Ellimist are characters in children's stories. They're the—what's the human term—dues ex smacking flaw for almost all the uncreative stories," Zim insisted.

"Deus ex machina," Marco snorted. "And believe me, he seems like it. He crops up just whenever we don't need him," he grumbled.

"**The Ellimist gave me back my morphing power, then twisted time so that I could acquire my own DNA,**" I said. Zim, Dib and Gaz all stared. "**The two-hour limit applies still. I could trap myself back in human morph, but I couldn't do that. This is my real body now,**" I said. There was a lot more to it, of course, but I didn't feel like details at the moment. I saw Rachel frown. She still saw me as human.

I had to decide now. The next part of my own story was my father's part. Jake told me to be honest, but that was a very quiet, secret part of me.

"**A few months later, someone came poking around, looking for me. A woman claiming to be my cousin wanted to take me in, and a man claimed to have my father's will, and had been directed to read it to me on my birthday that year. We checked it out. She seemed clean. It was only a freak accident that led us to discover that she was Visser Three in morph,**" I said. "**But I had to show up for the will reading, so I went in human morph, with as much backup as we could manage, since Visser Three was there, and we knew that the lawyer had to be a controller, too. I sat down, and he began to read my true father's last words to me**."

"**My father was an alien,**" I said abruptly. "**An Andalite in a human morph. I don't know if my mother knew. I never met him. The Ellimist erased all record and memory of him from Earth when he was called back to duty. But be came back to protect Earth, to fight the Yeerks... I don't know if he knew it was me, holding his hand as he lay dying.**"

A vacuum seemed to suck all the air out of the room. There was utter silence. I was holding my breath.

A light came on behind Zim's eyes. They widened.

"You're the son of Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul?" he sucked in a low breath, shock evident on his face. "The... _son_..." he repeated, more to himself. Dib and Gaz seemed equally surprised, mouths slightly agape.

"**That's all there is of me to tell**," I said after a brief silence as the other three digested the information. Zim nodded, still deep in thought. Dib had started looking at everyone's straws. "**The others can tell you more, things that they had more to do with,**" I said, looking to Rachel and the others.

"Who's next?" Jake asked quietly, glancing at his own straw.

Gaz tossed her little red piece of straw to the floor in the center of the circle of storytellers.

"My Yeerk was a power-hungry bitch, and that's the only reason any of us are alive and free today."


	12. Chapter 12

Rolling right along...

Roses are red,  
Violets are blue,  
Me no own,  
So you no sue.

* * *

I didn't meet anyone's eyes. I couldn't. I stared at the floor.

"After Dib helped Zim out, some stuff happened. We went places, flew around the universe. We visited some planets in the Irk empire, and a couple elsewhere. Thwarted evil, that sort of thing. We got back just in time for the release of _Vampire Piggy Hunter: Prologue_ a couple months ago," I said quietly.

Zim and Dib hadn't heard the whole story, either. They knew what happened after I came home, but I had never told them the story of how it happened.

"I was at the mall for the midnight release," I said. "The line was huge. There must have been 200 of us there."

I heard Dib stop breathing. The others seemed anxious, anticipating what came next.

"Then, I saw people start dropping towards the front of the line. Our experiences in space made me hold my breath. It was some sort of knockout gas. I didn't completely escape, but I came to for a sec while they were carrying us through the mall. That was the first time I saw Hork Bajir. One was dragging me by the back of my shirt. I was aware, but paralyzed," I said. Flashes of the mall swam in my head. "They dragged us to the dressing rooms in one of the stores, and then down into a huge cavern..."

Dib gulped. Everyone shifted thier weight, unsettled. So I wasn't the only one who had bad experiences in the Yeerk Pool.

"I saw them dragging people down, like an assembly line, dunking thier unconcious heads in water. For a minute, I thought they were drowning us. They lay the victims on cots. By the time I got to the front of the line, I could see the pool was filled with slugs. It looked like..." I paused. I pushed the image back out of my head. "You know what it looked like," I said, even more quietly.

I took a deep breath to steady myself. I still had nightmares about what came next... and now when I woke up and couldn't move? Sleep paralysis didn't just scare me anymore, it terrified the hell out of me.

"I passed out again before they got to me. When I came to..."

I chanced a glance up. Jake was looking intensely at me, not unkindly. He looked... empathetic? Dib was staring at the ground, pale and shaken. I knew he felt guilty for what happened to me. Despite myself, I reached for his hand. He started, staring at me, wide-eyed.

"Nobody could have prevented it," I said lowly, uncharacteristically comforting.

It could have been prevented. I could have not gone. I could have gone with Zim, who would have been able to get me out of there before the gas affected his own, more resistant immune system. I could have run when I saw people dropping, instead of just holding my breath.

Dib didn't need to hear _that_.

"Gaz, I'm so sorry," Cassie whispered, moving forward to put a hand on my arm. Instinctively, I jerked back before she could touch me.

"It gets worse," I muttered, trying to ignore the surprised and slightly hurt expression on the girl's face. She stepped back next to Jake, who lay a hand on her shoulder. I envied them. I wasn't sure if they were "out", but I'm pretty sure they liked each other.

"Woke up a while later. I couldn't move. I heard a cackle in my head, and for a minute I thought I was dreaming. Esplin 903 was laughing, walking me to home. As soon as I woke up, she started taunting me. She saw everything, and was going to take Dib, and use him, and take Zim. The Yeerks would kill for some of the technology that Irkens have, and she would be made a sub-visser at the very least if she brought him to the Yeerks," I said quietly.

"She wanted the glory. That's the only reason she didn't turn the information in as soon as she was in my head. She wanted the credit for leading Zim and Dib straight to Visser Three himself, without the beurocracy in between to soak up some of _her_ recognition. At the time, Zim and Did didn't trust me with everything. They were right, honestly," I said to the frowns of the Animorphs.

"If they had trusted me to tell me that there was a bio-scan on the door of the house, Esplin 903 would have had to go to the Yeerks for backup, because she couldn't get into Zim's lab unnoticed," I said. "Zim and Dib wouldn't be here. It was mostly Zim's paranoia that paid off," I said with half of a laugh. I quickly sobered back up. It wasn't really funny.

"I fought the whole way there. She was going on about how they would be enslaved. Trapped, like I was. It... Dib may be annoying, but I wouldn't wish that helplessness on anyone. She kept me overnight, so as not to raise suspicions. I didn't sleep. I couldn't. My mind was awake, screaming to get out. I'm not used to being out of control. I do what I want, when i want, how I want. When Dib and Zim would fight, I was generally the one who wound up breaking it up, just because they were in my way. But I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even blink."

I choked on my words. "I was _scared_."

I could almost feel Dib's eyes widen. I didn't look at him, but I could feel how he shifted closer. I backed away a little.

"The next morning, Esplin 903 told Dib that Zim's silly robot visited me that night and took my Gameslave, and that we had to go get it or else. She was perfect. My tone of voice, the demand... There was no way to tell it wasn't me. She narrowed my eyes and clenched my fists and growled the way I would. Meanwhile, I'm screaming in my mind for her to leave my brother alone...

"I had never been so relieved to see those ridiculous garden gnomes of his take aim at me. The Yeerk only had my memories, so she made me growl and stalk up to the door. She thought they were still programmed to only target suspicious activity. Dib knew they had been outfitted with bio-scan technology after we got back from our travels. I didn't know how, but I knew... hoped that Zim would know it wasn't me." I shot the green alien a look. He was pretending to be engrossed in some data scrolling down on a nearby screen.

"I opened the door, and cables shot out of the ceiling to trap me. Dib was kind of shocked, but Zim emerged from the refrigerator with a laser gun in his hand. I mentally cheered as he pointed it at me. Dib freaked out, and nearly took him down for pointing a gun at his sister. He and the Yeerk argued. The Yeerk would have convinced him to let us go, if Zim didn't have the scanner screen swing down out of the ceiling to confirm that her DNA was foreign. Zim had heard of the Yeerks, but we had never guessed they were on Earth."

"You didn't come across any with your scanner-thingy?" Rachel interrupted. I shook my head.

"Scanning people we met wasn't exactly routine until after we found out about the Yeerk invasion," I pointed out. "It's not something you normally suspect of people." Rachel looked somewhat sheepish.

"They held me. Zim had the house take me down, deep into the lab. Even if I had escaped the cage, The Yeerk would have been lost for days before it could get out and tell anyone. Zim kept me there. He didn't let Dib near me. He didn't come near me, much, either. He had Minimoose bring me food. The Yeerk growled and snapped and never gave up her cover... Not until the Fugue began," I said darkly.

"My Yeerk... I wasn't her first host. She had eight before me. A Gedd, three Hork Bajir, and four other humans..." I felt slightly dizzy, the way I always did when the memories of those few hours came back to me. I felt the pain and horror of all of her previous hosts, and I could hear her own screams of agony.

"Zim brought Dib down to watch the slug crawl out of my ear. We all watched it shiver and die," I said. When that damned slug withered away, I cried. For the first time since I was five, I sobbed with relief and pain and fear. I wasn't going to tell them that.

I stopped to gather my words. "Ever since then, we've all been even more paranoid. Bio-scans on everyone we meet. Zim grows most of our food in the lab. I can't order from the same pizza place more than once a month. Tak—one of Zim's allies—made me this," I held up the pendant around my neck that toggled my hologram. "I couldn't be seen. I shouldn't be alive. To the Yeerks, I can't be alive. If they got hold of Zim or Dib, things could go downhill for humans really fast."

There was silence. I took a breath. "Well now you know," I said finally.

"I'm sorry."

My head snapped up. Who spoke? I caught Marco's eyes. He was the one who had initially been suspicious of me, back when we met at the clearing. He looked somewhat apologetic.

I hesitated, then shrugged.

"You had a right to be suspicious," I conceded. "We all have reasons to be suspicious," I added, glancing at Rachel. Her own cousin was a Yeerk. It would make anybody paranoid to know that.

I've heard enough," Jake said, straightening. "If you guys are satisfied, so are we. There's probably more to tell, but I trust that it will come out in time," he said, looking at his 'troops' as if daring anyone to object. I looked to Zim, who appeared slightly relieved. Dib nodded once. I shrugged.

"So," Rachel said, looking somewhat put-out, but otherwise down-to-business. "Yeerks. Army. What do we do?" Everyone looked at one another. Nothing came to mind.

Zim said something that I recognized as a very, _very_ bad word.


	13. Chapter 13

I've been told that chapters like this are "filler." This is a lie. When nothing outwardly significant is going on with the plot, it's because something significant is going on with the people.

…It's a filler chapter. An important filler chapter, yes, but a "filler" chapter nonetheless. Filler doesn't even look like a word anymore. Filler. Filler. Filler. Haha.

Enjoy.

* * *

I stared at the computers around me. Most of them were running in a foreign language—I presumed Zim's language. It was awkward and comical-looking, but I was able to pick out certain commands. Zim was pointing out features to me, and I was trying to absorb it as quickly as I could. I looked down at the hand-held communicator he had given me. I had already memorized the characters for everyone's names, and the commands on that, but everyone else seemed to be having problems.

"Where's Gaz again?" Cassie asked Dib, holding her communicator out to him.

"Here, see? This character looks kind of like a skull, right? That's how I used to pick out her name in Irken. It gets easier, I promise," he said, pointing to the screen.

"Marco!" Zim barked, drawing my attention back to the keyboard in front of me. "You're the only human who can do this stuff. Pay attention!"

Most of us were in another part of the lab. Zim had taken us down to show us some of his gadgets and gizmos. He had distributed tiny, watch-sized communicators. We were going to tell our parents that we won them in a raffle. We couldn't wear them if there was a danger of needing to morph, but they had communicator and bio-scan functions built in, like Dib's, plus a self-destruct button if we needed to leave them behind to morph. Zim said they were a "slime a dozen", and not to hesitate to destroy them if necessary.

"_Don't touch that!_" Zim roared, flying to the other side of the room to bat Rachel's hands away from an array of weapons on the wall. Our eyes widened as we saw him handing several feet off the ground, supported by long, narrow, insect-like legs. Abruptly, he dropped to the floor and they folded up, retracting inside the PAK on his back. There was a beat of silence.

"Those are experimental guns," he explained. "Still unstable," he added. We still stared at him.

"_What are you staring at, stink humans?_"

"Those… spider thingys…" I said, slightly stunned. Zim looked surprised, scratching the base of one of his antennae.

"Oh. Right." He extracted them again, using them to walk up the wall and hang from the ceiling.

"Part of my PAK. Standard Irken Issue," he preened, scuttling down the other wall and retracting them once both feet were on the floor.

"Can we get some of those?" I asked. Besides useful, that just looked cool! "I promise to only use them for good!"

"Of course you can," Zim said mildly. I was about to grin when I saw his face break into a wicked, teeth-bearing smile. "You just need to have the ports drilled into your spinal cord. No anesthetic, that inhibits the uplink process from the brain to the PAK."

My eyes widened, and I stole a glance at the horrified Cassie, who had dropped her communicator.

"Really?" she asked. Zim looked back towards her, his expression growing less insane.

"We have it done as smeet, much like your human circumvention. It doesn't hurt as much at that age."

"Circumvention?" Rachel asked, furrowing her brows.

"Nothing," Dib put in quickly. "Zim, shut up. Here, Cassie," he handed her back her communicator.

"So humans can't use them?" I asked. Zim looked down at a console.

"Not without modification," he said simply, typing some things in. He waved me over, so I left the station I had been at. "Look at this, these are the controls for the security system," he began explaining. I focused and began paying attention as best I could.

* * *

"Here's the Bio-scanner screen for the outer perimeter," I said, pointing at the bank of monitors, each with different angles on all corners of the house. "When it identifies a yeerk, the scanner puts a green target on it on the view screen, and flashes some lights. Most of the time, it's just someone walking their dog, or jogging. 'Normal' stuff, you know?"

Jake nodded, and Tobias bobbed his head. I was touring them the upper parts of the lab while Zim got the others their communicators. Jake declined one, saying it was unsafe with his brother in the house, and Tobias didn't need one. Zim was going to make one for Ax, too, and they would take it to him later. I guessed Zim wanted to make Ax's special as a peace offering.

"What do you do if you're attacked?" Jake asked. I gave a half-shrug.

"The front porch light has a laser attached to a bio-scan with a trigger on Zim, Dib and my's watches. The sidewalk blocks each give way to separate holding tanks, and the lawn has installed, just under the surface, some spikes that can shoot up and inject a paralysing venom into any intruder's feet. The house itself can gas any intruders while we're not home, if they make it past the other defenses, and Zim's lab has something called a Gleet Bio-Filter programmed against Yeerks. Unfortunately, it kills the host, but if they're that far into our defenses, we can't afford to take prisoners," I added bitterly.

"**Have you? Taken prisoners, I mean?**" Tobias asked.

"Yes, once. A lowlife. The human lost his job the day before he got his Yeerk. They couldn't release him without knowing about the invasion, but he still had some friends who would be suspicious if he... disappeared. By the time he bummed it on our lawn, triggering the spikes, he was alone, with only a few hours left before he needed Kandrona," I said. Jake's eyes widened.

"We kept him in a cell until the Fugue was over, then we wiped his memory, Zim altered his face, and we deposited him in South America. Last I heard, he was worshipped as a god in an Amazonian tribe who had never seen white men before," I added to ease the concern on Jake's face. I imagined Tobias was concerned, too, but it was hard to tell with a hawk's face. He fluttered to another console.

"Gaz..." Jake put a hand on my shoulder. I twitched away, but he simple replaced it. I looked at him. "I..." He began. I pursed my lips, gently shrugging out of his grip.

"I know what it's like," he said finally. "Having a Yeerk. Suffering through the Fugue."

My eyes widened. I hadn't met anyone before who had been freed. "How?" I asked simply.

"We were in the Yeerk pool again... Trying to save the world, as usual. I fell in. I was infested, but unconscious. Thank God for the others, Marco's paranoia, Cassie's sensibility... They locked me up in the cabin where Marco and I took Dib when we first met. Kept watch. The whole time, that stupid Yeerk was taunting me. He had been my brother Tom's first Yeerk..."

My mouth hung open. Jake gave me a wry smile. I swallowed hard, then nodded. I didn't have words. I wasn't alone, and that meant everything. I relaxed a tiny bit.


	14. Chapter 14

In response to a rather persistent reviewer; No. I do not "accept OCs," and honestly I find it somewhat rude that you would continue asking while leaving neither method of contact nor any other critique of my story.

To the wonderful readers who have stuck with me thus far, to all of those who have put this story on their favorites list, who have added it to alerts, and who have reviewed: I thank you with all my heart. You keep me going.

While story-boarding the remainder of this fic, I came to realize that I had gotten our illustrious heroes in a _little_ too deep. So, I'm just going to _drown_ them in drama. I really hope you enjoy the turn this story will take in the next 3-4 chapters, since I will _immensely_ enjoy writing it.

This chapter is somewhat lacking in length, but the next few will more than make up for it, I promise.

* * *

The gentle sound of a stuff-bristled broom scraping hay and dirt and grass clippings into a pile was the only sound between Cassie and me. I needed to think. After we had been introduced to Zim's lab and technology, we lingered for just a moment before drifting our separate ways, feeling horribly discouraged. The Yeerks were going after the whole military. If they succeeded, they would literally cripple the planet against an invasion. The thought weighed heavily on all of our minds.

The floor was spotless, and we kept sweeping. Finally, I stopped. Cassie looked up. Her deep brown eyes were anxious. I gave her a comforting smile.

"We'll figure it out. Maybe the Chee..."

"We can't do that," Cassie said gently. "Erik has not been the same since the first time, we can't destroy a whole race..."

"_Our_ race is going to be destroyed," I impressed. Cassie sighed and sat down heavily on a bale of hay.

"I know, Jake," she said, sounding quiet and defeated. "But even if we got them to fight for us, they can't take on an entire army, can they?"

I shrugged. She was right, though. The Chee needed their non-violence programming. We needed them, we couldn't alienate them by asking something so horrific.

"No, we could not," a voice interrupted. We both spun around, not even having heard anyone approach. I cursed under my breath; that sort of thing could get us killed, if it wasn't Erik himself interrupting.

"Erik," I greeted. Cassie gave a small wave and a wan smile.

"I guess you've heard of the Yeerks latest plan, then," Erik said heavily. We nodded.

"Zim found out and told us."

"Zim?" Erik asked, surprised. Cassie and I exchanged looks. Surprising a Chee was difficult.

"You do not know about Zim? I mean, I guessed you didn't have contact with him, but I thought you guys knew everything." Cassie stood and came to stand beside me. Erik frowned.

"Some years ago, there was an Irken who made regular transmissions to his native Armada, but he seemed incompetent. I haven't heard anything since; we assumed he had left," Erik said, his holographic eyebrows furrowing.

"He's back. He and Dib, plus Dib's sister, are resisting. Not as openly as we are, but they're aware of the situation. They've offered their assistance," I said. The android behind the hologram was quiet.

"If he has abandoned his mission, that is newsworthy."

"What do the Chee know of the Irkens?" Cassie asked.

"They are hive-creatures who have evolved into little more than programmable drones. They have, and exercise, free will, but they are assigned and perform their duties from birth out of a tube. They've become autonomous, biological robots."

I nodded shortly. Everyone seemed to have a different perspective on these... Irkens. I resolved to talk to Zim about it myself.

"What are we going to do about the Yeerks?" Cassie interrupted quietly. For the first time, I saw Erik looking utterly lost.

* * *

"**I trust them,**" I said. Ax's four eyes stared at me with something akin to doubt.

"**I do not see how. He is an Invader. Irkens have programmed brains, he cannot do anything but invade.**" Ax crossed his spindly arms defiantly. I shifted on my claws. I didn't know if Zim wanted the information to be made public or not.

"**He's not registered as an Invader,**" I said. Ax's eyes widened. They smiled, and then he laughed.

"**What is he, then? A Scientist? An Officer?**" he mocked. "**He's tall, but they don't send anyone but Invaders to unconquered planets.**"

"**That's his story to tell,**" I said evasively. "**But I believe him. He could help us, we need all the help we can get,**" I said quietly. Ax stopped smiling with his eyes. They now looked serious.

"**Why?**" he asked.

"**That's what I came here to tell you... The Yeerks. We know their next plan.**"

Ax looked somewhat excited, preparing to deal another blow to the invading forces.

"**What is is?**"

"**They are infiltrating our military. Almost the entire American defense force will be infested.**"

Ax's expression turned to horror.

* * *

"I don't like the idea," I said firmly. I really didn't.

"They could be of help to us, especially since we'll have the element of surprise. They're only expecting the six of us, if we show up with eight, they'll start to wonder what else we have in reserve; they'll wonder if the reinforcements have arrived and it might throw them off just enough to give us an edge. We need everything we can get to make it through this one," Marco pointed out. I knew he didn't want to trust too much to more people, but I also knew that he was one of the first ones to talk to Dib when he showed up, and he knew the strategic advantage that could come from a stronger army.

"But they don't know how we do things. It's not like we have time to go on a few 'practice missions' to make sure everyone works together," I shot back.

"That's a risk we have to take. There will _be_ no more missions if they Yeerks succeed here. It'll be over. More over than it's ever been before," Marco argued.

He had a point. I didn't want to admit it. But... I thought about Gaz. She had been a Yeerk. Like my cousin, Jake. She knew the horror. She seemed...

I didn't want to repeat past mistakes.

"I'm with Marco," Cassie said quietly, surprising me.

"Cassie, why?" I frowned.

"They need us, and we need them. We can't make it through otherwise. This is so huge, we need all the help we can get."

"So am I the only one against it?" I barked, glaring at my cousin.

"I guess so," he said.

I sighed heavily.


	15. Chapter 15

I told you in my last (short) chapter that I'd try to make it up to you; and I do so with a super-quick update. I'm so excited about the turn this story will take, I sincerely hope you enjoy it as much as I will.

–

I stared at the glowing blue cube with no little apprehension. Maybe that had something to do with the being holding it, though. I had forgotten how intimidating the tail blade on an Andalite was, since last time I had seen it, we were all too busy being suspicious of one another to properly pay attention.

He had the blue cube balanced on a blue-furred hand with too many fingers. That much was okay. Zim had too few; that didn't bother me. What bothered me was the irritation he showed as he offered us the morphing power.

Dib lay his hand on one side. I lay mine on the other, across from Dib's hand and adjacent to Ax's. I felt... tingly. There was no ceremony, just an offer, a tingle, and I stepped back. Dib stared at his hands in wonder. I let mine drop to my side.

"Now, we just need to get you some morphs," Jake announced. Dib's eyes lit up. I looked at him curious. He had explained already about the DNA absorption process, and Zim and Ax had actually spent several civil minutes discussing the minutia of the process.

That, however, had devolved into an argument, though, and Zim stomped off. He declined the morphing power, claiming that he had no need to turn into earthly-stink-beasts. He raged off, calling for GIR to fetch Mini-moose and meet him in the squid-lab. At the Animorph's confused looks, Dib had dismissed the incident. I hoped he wasn't working on another demon squid zombie. The last one had caused some... problems... on planet Voot, the garage planet.

"My mom works at the Gardens, we can get you in there and see about acquiring some battle morphs. Then we'll go to my barn and get you some stealth and travel morphs," Cassie was saying. I looked up.

"Battle morphs?" I asked.

"We all have something we use for power. I use a wolf morph. Ax is himself, Jake has a tiger. We use whatever morph we need for the situation, but when it comes to, well... damage, we all have our favorites," she explained. I nodded. "Do you have any ideas as to what you would like?" she asked.

"Something powerful, right?" I asked, thinking. I ran my mind over every powerful creature I knew. She said that Jake had a tiger, so I didn't want to take that. "What about a lion?" I asked. An odd expression passed over their faces.

"Uhm..." Cassie hesitated. Lion was out, I guessed.

"Or a jaguar," I added thoughtfully. They relaxed.

"We just got a beautiful black jaguar at the Gardens," Cassie said. "Her exhibit isn't open yet, but I bet we can get in."

I smiled. Excellent.

"What about you, Dib?" Jake asked.

"I'm not sure yet. Maybe something unassuming. I hear Hippos are pretty strong," he said. I snickered.

"Finally, your body will be bigger than your head," I shot. Dib punched me on the arm. I rubbed the spot, glaring, before we both laughed. The Animorphs seemed surprised at our interaction.

"Well, should we go, then?" I asked, calming down quickly.

"We should probably head to my barn and get you a bird morph, then we'll go to the Gardens once it gets dark.

And so we did.

Turning into a bird was the strangest thing I had ever done, full stop. I felt myself get lighter, my bones hollowed out. There was a faint crunch as they rearranged. I felt like it should hurt, but it really didn't. It sort of itched as feathers popped out of my skin. I flapped my winds experimentally.

_DANGER_.

I wanted to take flight, so I did. Shot up and past the giant beings that surrounded me.

"She doesn't have control of the morph!" I heard someone yell. I flapped towards a square hole, shot through it. My wingtips brushed either side of the window, and I surged upwards. I saw, far off, another bird taking flight.

"**Gaz, it's me. Tobias. Calm down and land. You need to get control of the instincts.**"

_Instincts?_

"**Gaz? Come on.**"

Gaz.

"**Oh!**" I cried in thought-speech. Cassie had explained the instincts taking over before demonstrating her own bird-of-prey morph. She was an osprey, a fishing bird. I was slightly different. My wingspan was just a bit smaller, and my tail was forked. I was a Swallow-tailed Kite, sleek in black and white. Except I wasn't a bird, I was a girl. I banked left and aimed back for the barn, gliding in and flaring my wings, all without thinking. I settled on the floor.

"**That was so weird,**" I said, ruffling my feathers just to get a feel for the body. Tobias swooped in after me.

"**You okay?**" he asked.

"**Yeah,**" I said, cocking my head to look at him. I could see every pin on every feather of his body. I saw a mite crawling near his eye. I didn't say anything.

"Dib? Your turn," Jake said, gesturing and stepping back. Dib nodded and took a deep breath. He was morphing a Stellar's Sea Eagle. Tobias wasn't thrilled about it, but I wasn't sure why.

It was just as weird to watch the second time around, especially since I now knew what he was feeling as he changed. I could feel the echoes of my own changes in a sort of phantom-body state. Once Dib was fully formed and in control, we took off, spreading out over the sky, avoiding formation. I watched the Bald Eagle that was Rachel dive towards the Gardens.

We nimbly avoided security and crept in our 'morphing suits' towards the new jaguar's enclosure. There were tall chain-link fences surrounding it, with strips woven through the chains to obscure the view. We found a crack in the links and slipped through. I searched through the dark foliage to try and locate the jaguar I was to 'acquire'. I almost jumped when I spotted him, not feet from the edge of the cage, crouched and staring at us. He was dark, almost all black, with the jaguar's characteristic spots only showing through on his face.

"He's melanistic," Cassie explained. "His coat has more black than usual. It's a recessive trait in jaguars."

I almost grinned. He was perfect.

"...So how do we get in to touch him?" Dib asked quietly.

Cassie led us around the side of the building, frowning at the door. It was locked. She looked up, noticing the cracked window to the side. It was barely open an inch.

"I'm going to go fly, then open it from the inside. Gaz, Dib, you might want to close your eyes."

We didn't. I wished I did. I've been to Blorch, I've seen some pretty nasty stuff, but watching a pretty girl turn into a fly was just something we didn't need to see. She's apparently quite skilled at this ability, and managed to get as small as possible before the really gross changes happened, but nothing can make that look okay. Nothing.

Once finished, she zipped up and through the window. Moments later, breathing somewhat heavily, she opened the door and we all slipped inside. The first door on the right was the jaguar's cage. Marco was going to come in with me, morph behind the wall. He was a gorilla. A massive, muscle-bound male silver-back gorilla. Then, he'd back me up as I tried to acquire the jaguar.

We entered the cage behind a sort of fake rock wall. We were surrounded by trees and posts for the jaguar to play around on. I peeked around the wall, looking for our kitty friend. I tried to steady my breathing, but this was unusually nerve-wracking for someone who had faced down a slaughtering rat-person. But they were technically sentient people, and while vicious, they had fear that I could play off of. Jaguars knew no fear.

I felt hot breath next to my ear and froze.

"Touch it," Marco urged. "It'll go into a trance and we can haul out of here while it recovers."

The jaguar flicked his ears towards the whisper, but stayed otherwise focused on me. Below hid head, out of his sight, I lifted my hand and placed it on his neck. His eyelids drooped, and I could sort of sense when I had the DNA in me.

"Now, let go and back away quickly. He'll wake up in about 10 seconds," Marco coached. I nodded, taking a deep breath. I slid my hand over his glossy coat and let it drop, scrambling backwards as quietly and gracefully as I could. Marco and I slipped back through the door and latched it without him ever having to morph. My heart was pounding, and I felt the exhilarating surge of adrenaline pump through my veins. I grinned.


	16. Chapter 16

Again, my apologies for the wait. Many thanks to my wonderful reviewers, who have inspired and encouraged me thus far. In this chapter, you get a (very) tiny taste of Zim&Co.'s travels. I hope you like it! I'd like to do some more, put the scene in context, but that will have to be a whole story for another fic.

For now, Enjoy.

* * *

It was strange, knowing that I had some random animal's DNA inside me. I didn't feel any different, of course, but knowing the power that lay within my skin was pretty cool. I could become a hippopotamus. Laugh if you will, hippos are responsible for almost more deaths per year than sharks. I also took a small, agile lynx for speed, and Gaz and I both acquired a female wolf at the wildlife rescue that Cassie's father ran.

"Zim?" I called, peering into the depths of the storage room.

_Squeak_.

I turned around.

"Ah. Mini-moose," I said. "Where's Zim?"

Mini-moose hovered for a moment before floating upside-down.

_Squeak._

"Thanks," I said, turning back towards the elevator. I went up to the next level, to the armory. I walked back through the rows of weapons, some ancient, some modern, some Irken, some human, some Yeerk... The door in the back of the room slid open when I placed my hand on the scanner beside it.

I found Zim hunched over a table, sparks flying off of the tools he was using to modify what looked like a black and blue spotted cabochon.

"How's it coming?" I asked quietly, after a moment. Zim stopped abruptly and looked up, baring his teeth.

"I'll _tell_ you when it's _ready_," he spat, looking back down at his work. I sighed, turning to leave. I was almost at the door when I heard a shout of triumph.

"Ah-_HAH_!"

I looked back. Zim was holding it up over his head, laughing in a way eerily reminiscent of our early days, back when we fought like cats and dogs.

I raised an eyebrow. He slammed it back on the table.

"It's finished."

He stalked past me back into the lab. I followed, taking a look back at the PAK on the table before letting the door swoosh closed behind us.

I went up to the main house, mentally preparing myself to break the news to Gaz. I heard the floor creak above me, and so, now curious, continued on up to Gaz's room.

I knocked. I heard a low growl, deeper than when Gaz usually grumbles at me.

"**Hang on,**" I heard her voice in my head, exasperated. I stepped back, startled. She was in morph? A minute later, her door cracked open. One amber eye peered out from behind it. The sliver of her face I could see was covered in sweat and looked exhausted.

"Gaz, are you okay?" I asked. I pushed the door open, and she stepped back to let me. She was in a black unitard that served as her morphing suit, soaked in sweat, and shaking with exhaustion.

"I'm fine. I'm practicing," she said shortly. Even as she spoke, she took a few deep breaths and shrank. Feathers popped out of her skin before she was even half her height. Her feet grew into talons and a minute later I was staring at a kite. It's tiny ribcage was fluttering with exhausted breaths. After a long moment, during which I processed my shock and confusion, she began to grow back to human-size. The changes came sluggishly, but soon enough she was more human than bird, even more exhausted-looking than before.

"Gaz, stop!" I protested, recovering my voice as black fur rippled across her arms almost as soon as she was fully human. The fur receded slowly, reluctantly.

"Why?" she demanded, her fists on her hips. She glared at me, more sharply than she had in a long time. "I have something I can use now, to fight those filthy slime logs, I'm going to use it," she quipped, leaving me speechless. My sister wanted to fight? She had spent so long avoiding the thought of the Yeerks and anything to do with them, and here she was, practicing morphing?

Her fingers shortened and sprouted inch-long claws. Her skin grew dark to match her leotard, then fur popped out of her skin much like feathers usually did in bird morph. Her ears moved up her head and her amber eyes glittered yellow. She sunk onto all fours and I found myself staring at something more jaguar than girl.

She growled at me and bared her teeth. I backed out of the room and shut the door hastily.

"...Gaz?"

A few minutes later, her human voice, wavering with exhaustion, replied.

"Go away, Dib."

I did, making a note to ask Jake how many times it was safe to morph a day. Gaz looked almost ill, I couldn't let her continue if it was going to hurt her. I had almost forgotten my reason for coming to see her in the first place. I hesitated, but decided against knocking once more. Gaz would find out soon enough.

I headed back to the lab. Zim had gone to prepare a sterile room and was nowhere in sight. I pressed Jake's speed dial. He, on the other hand, did have to know.

"Hello?"

Jake answered. Relieved, I put on a casual tone.

"Hey, it's me. I've got some free time, want to come over for a bit?" I asked. Jake paused, and I could almost see his confusion through the line.

"Sure, I guess. I'll be over in a bit."

We hung up. I went back to the main house, my thoughts back on Gaz's new-found zeal for battle. My mind drifted back, more than a few months prior, to our escape from the recently restored zoo-planet Blorch.

"_Filthy stink-human!" Zim roared. Dib rolled his eyes and kicked the console. It began to whir back to life, all of the buttons and lights returning to full power. This only enraged the Irken even more, his green skin turning almost blue with rage. Behind them, Gaz growled._

"_Shut up," she hissed, fingers flying over the joysticks, buttons, and track pads of the weapons station. "You're going to get us killed!"_

"_YAY!" GIR cried from his safe place, latched tightly around her shoulders like a tiny, metallic backpack._

"_No, GIR, not yay. Killed is bad! And Gaz! You should be in the safe pod!" Dib gasped, reaching out to grab his sister_

"_Dib-worm, she just destroyed six enemy ships," Zim pointed out, grudgingly respectful. Gaz ignored them, taking out another ship before turning her head to glare at them out the corner of her eyes._

"_Are you going to fly, or are we going to just sit here and blow up?" she demanded. Zim dove for the flight controls as Dib slid into the navigator's seat. GIR happily relinquished his place on her back as she shrugged out of his grip to reach for another control stick, latching instead onto Zim's headrest._

"_LOOK AT THE SMILE!" GIR bellowed, pointing to a massive terra-formed etching of a smiley-faced 'Welcome!' sign on the side of the smallish moon just outside the blockade. Dib's eyes lit up._

"_Head for the nine-six quadrant, behind that moon!" He said. Zim promptly took off in the complete opposite direction._

"_STINK-BEAST! Do not tell me how to pilot my SHIP!" Zim declared wildly, zig-zagging through the blockade as Gaz continued to take aim on the enemy. GIR squealed happily as he was thrown about the cabin, oblivious to the danger, as usual._

"_You STUPID ALIEN!" Dib cried, frustrated._

"_I said SHUT UP!" Gaz bellowed, shooting two ships simultaneously, while intercepting a third's missile with the ship's lasers. "GIR! Master needs a hug!" Gaz said, grateful when GIR accepted the 'offered' hug and pinned Zim's arms to his sides with a manic cry of delight._

"_Dib, get us _out_ of here!" Gaz ordered, blasting the final ship that stood between them and freedom. As soon as Dib hit the thrust, she sent all power to the engines and rear shields. They rocketed away from the scene of the battle, neigh uncatchable in their speedy little souped-up Voot Cruiser, with Zim screaming the whole way about his ship and at GIR to get off. Gaz huffed as she left the weapons control._

"_That was stupid," she said, pulling her GameSlave out of a safe compartment in the wall as she dropped onto a comfortable couch-like seat in the far back of the ship._

I started at the doorbell, having been lost in my thoughts. I stood up and shuffled to the door, checked the peep-hole, and found Jake standing there. I pulled the door open and let him in.

"Thanks for coming," I said quickly. I ushered Jake to the kitchen, far away from the stairs, and consequently, Gaz's room.

"I've actually got two things," I said quietly. "One of which is... well, really important. I need you to know that we didn't try to hide it, it's just been in the works for so long that I never really thought it would happen until after we had already had our little pow-wow the other day." Jake looked torn between confusion and worry.

"What's going on?" he asked carefully.

"Well," I said, letting him see how worried I was, "first things first—is there a limit on how many times someone can morph in a day?"

Jake frowned. "Not that we've found, but it's really exhausting to morph multiple times..."

I nodded slowly. Jake leaned forward, eyes piercing.

"Why? Do you have a plan?" he asked, eager.

"No," I said with a small sigh. "It's..." I glanced up, as if I could see my sister through the walls and ceiling, and tell whether she was listening. "Gaz has been practicing morphing. Just morphing in and out of all of her forms, all day now. She's probably morphed ten times. She looks sick, I saw her a half hour ago, she was sweating and shaking and generally in bad shape."

Jake looked alarmed. "She's what?" he asked. I nodded. "Maybe I can talk to her? That can't be good for her health, she needs to be rested and ready to go anytime," he said seriously. I nodded again.

"Thanks. After I talk to you about the other thing," I said, filling with apprehension.

Jake sensed my unease and sat back, assuming a non-threatening pose of curiosity. I was grateful, but I knew he was just as guarded as ever.

"You're familiar with the PAK that Zim wears, right?" I asked. He nodded hesitantly.

"I've seen it, why?"

"Those PAKs are an Irken's Swiss Army knife. They have it all. You saw the climbing-legs, but it also has night-vision goggles, communication equipment, laser cutters, and a whole host of other useful tools," I said. Jake nodded slowly, waiting for the point of my little sales pitch.

"He's specially created one for me," I said, deciding not to beat around the bush. "A PAK, compatible with my human system."

There was a beat of silence. Jake's shocked eyes met mine, his stare boring into my skull.


	17. Chapter 17

Ladies and Gentlemen, my sincere apologies for the wait. I confess this is un-beta'd, but I'd rather get it up now, while I have a half second to breathe, than wait another 3-4 weeks.

To address a formatting issue: I originally had wanted to try and make it clear as to who was speaking through the story, but after receiving a number of comments on it, I've decided to explicitly state who is speaking from here on out. I may return and edit previous chapters, but that might be a while in coming.

With love,

* * *

_...previously..._

"_You're familiar with the PAK that Zim wears, right?" Dib asked. Jake nodded hesitantly._

"_I've seen it, why?"_

"_Those PAKs are an Irken's Swiss Army knife. They have it all. You saw the climbing-legs, but it also has night-vision goggles, communication equipment, laser cutters, and a whole host of other useful tools," Dib said. Jake nodded slowly, waiting for the point of his little sales pitch._

"_He's specially created one for me," Dib said, deciding not to beat around the bush. "A PAK, compatible with my human system."_

_There was a beat of silence. Jake's shocked eyes met Dib's, his stare boring into the boy's brain._

* * *

**Jake**

I almost reeled back as if struck by a physical blow. I certainly felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. I recalled the conversation the other day in the lab, when we first noticed Zim's PAK.

"But... Zim said it would be..."

"Painful," Dib put in with a grimace. "He's going to have to actually drill into my spine to attach the ports. It is going to be a long surgery," Dib said. My jaw hung open. Marco wasn't going to like this. Rachel was going to hate this. They would take it as proof of his betrayal against the human race. And Ax... I almost didn't dare to think of Ax's reaction.

"The others..." I began to voice my thoughts. Dib held a hand up to stop me.

"I know. They will not be happy to hear this. Which is why," he met my eyes again, "I'm telling you first."

I nodded. I understood, but it didn't make me any happier. I wasn't supposed to be the leader, but I could understand Dib's point.

"We're going to do it next week," Dib said. "We have that Friday off, so I'll be able to get used to the PAK before school resumes on Monday. I don't want any mishaps, because I'm getting it so late in life, I have to learn it consciously, instead of it coming instinctually, like when Zim got it," Dib explained. I nodded. In a bizarre way, it did make sense.

"What if we have to put some sort of plan into action while you're out of commission?" Of course, my primary concern was the Yeerks.

"You will still have Gaz and Zim," Dib said. "It would be wise to make contingency plans, just in case. You've gone this far without me, you'll still be two people up anyway," Dib pointed out. I nodded, standing up. I needed some time to process everything. Then, I remembered Gaz.

"Will Gaz be okay if we have to fight soon?" I asked quietly. Dib looked up at me seriously, hands folded on the table, the very picture of despair.

"I don't know. I told you what she had been doing," he said, shuffling his feet under his chair. He looked down at his hands, and I didn't know what to say.

"I'll go talk to her," I said quietly, turning towards the stairs. Dib nodded mutely, head still hanging as he pushed back his chair and stood up with a heavy sigh. He directed me to the right door, and I knocked gently.

"Go away, Dib," a voice sighed from inside. I pushed open the door.

"It's Jake," I said quietly. It was dark in the room, and I found Gaz sprawled out on the floor, her violet hair spread out in a halo around a face drenched in sweat. She flopped her head to the side as if she wanted to look up at me, but lacked the energy to properly focus on me.

"What?" she muttered, sounding just as drained as she looked.

"Dib said you wouldn't stop morphing," I said quietly, bending down to sit cross-legged on the floor. She took a few deep breaths, and then hoisted herself into a sitting position, trembling with visible effort.

"I've stopped now, haven't I?" she said acidly, glaring at me. Even her glare had no edge, though, as exhausted as she was. Her hair hung limp, as soaked in sweat as she was, and she looked pale. The effort of holding her body up had her shaking, her arms quivering as they tried to support her. Then, they gave out. She collapsed backwards, barely huffing in pain as her head bounced against the floor. I could see tears collect at the corner of her eyes. I felt a sharp wrench of empathetic pain in my gut, and I was briefly glad that Cassie wasn't here to see this.

"How many times before you couldn't morph anymore?" I asked quietly.

"Sixteen," she said, barely whispering. "I'm just so… tired…" she sighed.

"Gaz… This is dangerous," I said. Gaz flicked her eyes to me. I could tell she wanted to argue, btu didn't have the energy. "Hear me out," I said, drawing my legs up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I rested my chin on the tops my knees and gazed at her. "What if something happened? And we needed you right away? What if, right now, Marco called Dib and said that there were Yeerks advancing on us this very moment, and we needed all hand son deck?"

Gaz looked away, and I could see something resembling shame in her eyes.

"I know waiting sucks. But you have to stay fresh. Exercise and practice are all well and good, but you have to have some moderation. You can't be completely exhausted," I pointed out. Gaz didn't respond, but I could see that she got my message. One of the tears gathering in her eyes slipped down the side of her face, but she kept her silence.

I stood up and brushed myself off. There was jaguar hair on the floor, and it stuck to my jeans.

"I'm… not really good at this. If you need to talk, I know Cassie is a really good listener," I offered, unsure of what else to say. Gaz gave a stilted nod, and I turned towards the door. I didn't know what else to say as I left the room, closing the door behind me with as soft of a click as I could manage. It still seemed deafening. I went back downstairs, where I found Dib and Zim in the kitchen.

"Is she alive?" Zim asked with his usual tactless. There was an admonishing squeak from behind me, and I turned, startled, to find a rotund moose hanging in midair. I opened my mouth to ask what it was, but I was interrupted.

"Minimoose is right," Dib said, glaring at Zim. _What_ was right? How did he…? I wanted to ask, but Dib looked at me, the question obvious in his eyes. I gaped for a moment, my eyes going from the floating beach ball with antlers, to the alien and the boy, before I gathered my wits to reply.

"She just needs rest, I think," I said, shaking my head.

"GIR!" Zim shouted, and I jumped again. A loud squeal erupted from the living room, and a silver blur dashed in, clanking like tin cans dragged after a wagon.

"MASTER! Is Gazzy gonna be okay?" it asked. I stared. It was a tiny, silver robot, with too large of a head and curiously un-jointed limbs.

"Yes, if you bring her waffles," Zim said. The robot shrieked with happiness and bounced to the stove, pulling a Belgian waffler from the cabinet without ceremony, sending the other pots and pans crashing to the floor as Dib and Zim cringed.

"Thanks for looking in on her," Dib said, moving closer so he could lower his voice. "I'll keep you posted. He looked at Zim, who was studiously looking uninterested.

"Yes, yes, indebted," he said, flapping his hand in dismissal as he marched towards the stairs to go check on her himself. After a moment, Dib sighed. Another crash startled me, and Dib grabbed my shoulder to lead me to the door.

"It, ah… it gets messy when GIR cooks," he said, steering me out into the foyer as a cloud of flour began to roll across the floor.

"GIR? And…" I started to ask. Then, thinking better of it, I help up a hand to forestall explanation. "Actually, never mind. Let me know if Gaz gets worse. I'll ask Ax if there's a limit to morphing that he knows of."

"Thanks again," Dib said, opening the door for me. I left, barely glancing back at the house as I wondered, not for the first time, what all went on in there. I decided it wasn't a bad idea to visit Cassie, since I was on that end of town anyway…


	18. Chapter 18

I'm sorry for the further wait. Things will start moving more quickly from here on out, though.

* * *

**Gaz**

"I made you waaaaffles!" Gir screeched cheerfully, barging into my room without as much as a knock. _There goes that lock,_ I thought. I had to replace it every week or so, thanks to Gir's …enthusiasm. I sighed from my place on the floor. "Master said you needed energy, so I made them energetic!"

I didn't want to think about what that meant, but I smiled slightly. My guess was going to be some sort of rocket fuel. It wouldn't be the first time.

"Thank you, Gir," I said quietly. "But I can't sit up and eat yet."

"Aww… Somebody needs a hug!" Gir dropped the plate by the door and advanced on me, holding his arms out, eyes shining brightly and arms flung wide. He really was quite adorable sometimes. The tiny metal menace used to bother me, but like many people in our strange little household, he grows on you. Like fungus. I managed to throw an arm to the side, beckoning him closer. He squealed and jumped on my chest, encircling my neck in his tiny steel grip. I struggled to lift a hand and lay it on his back—it was as much of a hug as I was capable of giving right now. Gir hummed happily, giggling in my ear, and for a moment, I was at peace.

The peace was quickly broken by my broken door being flung back open, framing a nearly irate alien.

"GIR!" he bellowed, waving a gas can accusingly at the tiny robot, who leapt off my neck to sit cross-legged on my stomach with an innocent confusion in what passed for his eyes. "Humans can't eat vehicle fuel!"

I smirked a little. I knew it.

"But Gazzy needs energy!" Gir protested, standing up. His little legs dug into my belly, but he was light. I tried to sit up, and he toppled off with a giggle.

"Not this kind, Gir. Humans use carburetors for fuel," Zim explained, shaking the gas can to emphasize his point. I wheezed out a laugh.

"Carbohydrates," I gasped out, knocked out even more by the effort of sitting up.

"What?" Zim stopped, taken aback. I didn't have the energy to properly giggle at his expression, but it was amusing nevertheless.

"Humans use carbohydrates, not carburetors," I said, smirking. Zim's skin grew a deeper green, and I knew he was blushing.

"Same thing!" he barked, spinning on his heel and marching out of the room. "GIR! Come. We have THINGS to do!" he ordered. Gir giggled and jumped off my lap, hopped to the door, and turned to wave goodbye before he darted off down the hall after Zim. I watched him go with a sigh, and resolved to at least make it to my bed before I went down for a nap.

* * *

**Dib**

The next few days were somewhat blurred together. The thought of the growing Yeerk threat weighed heavily on all of our minds, but none of us knew what we could do about it. We couldn't really do much except wait. We needed... something. Something more... useful.

I was sitting in the lab, gazing absently at the monitors, when something flashed in the corner of my eye. Glancing towards the satellite readouts, I noticed a ship transmitting in subspace. I sat up straight—Yeerks didn't have that technology yet, did they?

I almost fell over in my scramble to get to the console and tune into the frequency. Immediately, I heard a very familiar voice screaming at me.

"_Zim! Ziiiiim! Zim, you maggoty human-loving slime, answer me! Ziiiiimm!_"

"Tak, this is Dib. Can you hear me?"

"_DIB-HUMAN, COORDINATES NOW!_"

My eyes widened at the note of panic in her voice. I immediately typed in the locator coordinates for the house and ran upstairs to move the Voot cruiser out of the immediate landing bay. Something in the back of my mind told me to turn on the emergency landing system, so I did, before ducking into the hallway. After a moment, I heard a whine, and as I glanced out the window I saw a trail of smoke heralding a cloaked, but damaged, ship. It aimed straight for the window, and seconds later I heard the soft 'fwump' of the emergency foam enveloping the whole room. It hardened enough to stop something crashing (or exploding, as it so happened on occasion), then belted away, leaving most things unharmed. It did horrible things to polyester, but…

I opened the door cautiously. The foam was already disintegrating into dust. I dashed over, closed the window, and turned to look at the voot cruiser that now sat askew in the middle of the landing bay.

"Tak?" I asked cautiously, hand inching towards a laser on the desk by the door.

"Dib," I heard a low whine issue from within the cruiser. "Dib, there are Yeerks here," she gasped. "On Earth," she added, coughing through the smoke and foam-dust.

"We know," I said, rushing forward to help pull her out of the nearly wrecked cruiser. The door flew open behind me, and Zim stormed in.

"TAK!" he bellowed, his face a furious shade of green. Tak glanced up at him, taken aback somewhat.

"You're taller," she said, eyes wide. She shook her head to clear it. "No—Zim—listen! Yeerks!"

"Maggoty _human-lover?_" Zim sneered, ignoring her proclamations of danger. She cackled between coughs, and I hauled her arm over my shoulders.

"Can we get her downstairs before you two do your macho stand-off thingy?" I asked Zim with a pointed look. He stopped, surveying the near-wreckage. Blaster marks littered the surface of her cruiser, and there was a hole through a fin that was almost certainly from a Dracon beam. After taking in the thick stream of blue goo oozing from a cut down Tak's forehead, he nodded curtly and turned to silently lead the way to the basement elevator, running ahead to prepare a medical bed.

"Dib, they'll enslave everyone," Tak wheezed, returning to her original point.

"I know," I said gravely. She sagged against me and I sighed, helping her down the stairs as carefully as possible. Minimoose squeaked as he floated up the stairs towards us. "Thanks," I said, giving him a nod before he floated past us to go get Gaz. Zim had already gotten the medical bay ready and given Jake a call for us. I took a deek breath. This was going to be more fun than a barrel of slaughtering rat-people.

* * *

Well, you all _did_ ask if she would show up—and yes, Skoodge and some others will make appearances soon as well. Patience, people.


End file.
